


Where Legends Lie

by rebbeile



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Community: paperlegends, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Slash, Time Travel, canon/modern AU fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-05
Updated: 2011-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:57:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 63,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebbeile/pseuds/rebbeile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin Emrys knows that the closest he’ll ever get to King Arthur is reading about him in the legends. He knows that it’s his destiny to live a quiet life in Camelot, and perhaps – if he’s lucky – find a beautiful, golden-haired man to settle down with. He expects his life to go pretty much according to plan.</p><p>What he doesn’t expect is for magic to pick him up and drop him into the middle of medieval Camelot during the reign of King Uther Pendragon, with no idea where he is or how to get home. He doesn’t expect to meet Arthur, because that sort of thing just doesn’t happen to ordinary people like him.</p><p>Merlin Emrys doesn’t know that his life was never destined to be ordinary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Legends Lie

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Paperlegends Big Bang 2011. The idea was originally taken from the TV series Lost in Austen, though I don’t believe it bears all that much resemblance to it anymore.
> 
> It also wouldn’t have been possible without the following people:
> 
> My wonderful cheerleader, sheswatching, without whose support this story would still be languishing in pieces on my hard drive. She did an amazing job of encouraging me to get my act together and write, and of talking me through my – not infrequent - moments of panic.
> 
> My amazing beta, thismaz, who was absolutely brilliant in managing to turn my very unpolished early drafts into something readable. I am forever grateful for the time she put into this piece(and any remaining mistakes within this are, of course, my own).
> 
> My artist, realproof, for the beautiful art she’s produced for this fic. She is incredibly talented and I am very lucky to have had her as an artist.
> 
> And finally, Aly, who was every kind of wonderful and gave me the support I needed to finally get this posted.
> 
>  **The Art Post for this fic can be found[here](http://stormfronticons.livejournal.com/110966.html ). **
> 
> **The original post for this fic is at Livejournal[here](http://rebbeile.livejournal.com/34825.html) . **

 

 

There were five ways in which Merlin Emrys did not fit into his life. He was wonderful at making friends, but hopeless at keeping them, he had a room that he never kept as ordered as his mother wanted it to be, and he’d had, in the past several months, more jobs than he could remember, because while his bosses were as different from each other as it was possible to be, the one thing they shared was a belief that Merlin Emrys was a terrible employee.

 

He was also, as it happened, a warlock, and as far as he was aware there weren’t any others like him around anymore. Merlin had endured several long years of knowing what exactly he could do, but not what it was, and after his mother, Hunith, had realised that it was magic, they’d decided that it should probably be kept secret. But the most significant reason that Merlin did not fit into his life was this – he had spent the entirety of it wishing that he could be somewhere else.

 

It wasn’t that he dreamt of island villas, or sandy white beaches where he could lie beside golden skinned women, like Will always seemed to do. The beach had never been all that appealing – it was probably because of all the sand – and Merlin was almost certain that women in general, no matter how golden-skinned, would never feature prominently in any of his fantasies. He’d realised that he was gay when he was around thirteen years old and the shirtless builders working on the house across the road from his interested him far more than the Playboy magazine his mates were huddled around.

 

No, what Merlin dreamt of was different from that. His dream was one that he’d had for most of his life, something that was both closer to him and further away than all of Will’s golden-skinned women. It had started when he was still small -only ten or so – and he’d been alone in the library, looking for something to read that wasn’t bright pink or blue with illustrations on every page. He had walked between the shelves until he’d reached the back wall, and there, nestled between A History of Camelot and a battered old travel guide, was the book.

 

He didn’t know why he’d been drawn to it, really. The cover was old, almost falling apart, and he’d barely been able to make out the image on the front of a man, golden-skinned, bearded and holding a sword. It wasn’t that picture so much as the state of the book that had made him pick it up. It looked like it had been discarded, swept aside, and even though it was only a book, Merlin couldn’t help feeling sorry for it. It had obviously been loved once, but not anymore.

 

So he’d taken it down off the shelf, held it up for the librarian to scan and tucked it under his arm, keeping it nestled against his body for the whole trip home. He’d opened it just once in the car to see lines and lines of words, ones that he couldn’t yet read. So instead, he’d flipped to the front page and read the title, the words heavy and strange in his mouth. _The Legend of King Arthur_. Even then, Merlin had known that this book was something special.

 

And it was that same book that Merlin was currently reading, curled up on the back seat of the bus with his backpack on his lap and his scarf wrapped firmly around his neck to keep out the cold. He could see the outskirts of the city through the front windscreen of the bus every time he looked up, and he hugged the book closer to his chest at the sight. It was a familiar, comfortable weight in his hands – one that hadn’t changed all throughout high school, one that had remained the same, even after his friends drifted away when school ended. He knew the story off by heart – brave King Arthur and his knights, ruling from the castle of Camelot, defending Albion against enemies and beasts, marrying Guinevere and becoming beloved by his people until the day he fell under Mordred’s hands. It was a familiar story, but one that could still send a thrill of joy through him every time he read it.

 

Merlin hadn’t had much contact with the city, but once he’d left school there weren’t many job opportunities for a boy of his age in Ealdor. And those that he had tried weren’t quite right. Or he wasn’t quite right. _Something_ definitely wasn’t quite right. Merlin had gathered that much from the short meetings he’d had with his bosses before they let him go.

 

So one night, after he’d been fired for the third time in as many months, he’d gone down into the kitchen when his mother was serving dinner and suggested that he might go to the city to look for work.

 

“Where will you live?” she’d asked after a long moment, because she knew by now that once he’d got an idea into his head, it was easier to let him carry it out rather than argue about it.

 

They’d talked it over, he’d asked Will about it – Will being the only other person in Ealdor who’d care if Merlin left – and then somehow, over the course of a few months, that idea had grown into something more. It had turned from a vague, half-formed intention to leave into a reality.

 

Merlin wrapped his arms around himself as he stared out the bus window, thinking over the past few days. They had gone by quickly, a whirl of packing and farewells that had left him breathless. Will, however, had been calm throughout it all. He had spent the entirety of the day before, for example, grinning at Merlin and making helpful observations about Merlin’s packing style from his position on Merlin’s bed.

 

“I have no idea how you got into medical school,” Merlin had said, sitting up from where he’d been pulling the last few books out from inside his desk and looking over at Will. The man had been sprawled across Merlin’s bed with his feet hanging over the edge and a magazine in his hands.

 

Will had dragged his eyes away from the girl in the centrefold and looked over at him. “I have my ways,” he said, winking, and Merlin knew that two years before that would have had his heart flopping around inside his chest like a dying fish. Or something. But he had grown up a lot since then, and had gained some degree of taste. Or, as Will put it, he’d realised that Will was ‘ _way_ out of your league, baby.’ Merlin had laughed at that. He and Will were in similar leagues, he knew, but Merlin was playing an entirely different game.

 

“Anyway, I’m only in it for the nurses,” Will continued, turning back to the magazine. Merlin snorted. Will had an oddly warped view of the world, in that he thought that every pretty woman he met would be flattered to know that Will wanted to have sex with her. He had been rejected more often than any other man Merlin had ever met.

 

Merlin picked up the last of his socks, none of which matched, and stuffed them into the final cardboard box that was sitting by the door.

 

“Done,” he sighed, staring around his mostly empty room, and Will sat up from the bed, tossing the magazine aside.

 

“Excellent. Let’s go to the pub.”

 

Merlin shook his head. “Will, I’m leaving _tomorrow_. At eight in the morning.”

 

“So you have a good twelve hours left in Ealdor,” he said with a grin, clapping a hand down on Merlin’s shoulder. “And you’re going to use them well.”

 

And that was how Merlin had found himself standing in the middle of The Green Dragon, Ealdor’s main pub, downing his – he didn’t know, maybe his fifth? - pint of beer, while Will alternately cheered him on and whispered things Merlin _really_ didn’t want to know about to the blonde he had his arm wrapped around. It also explained how he had ended up sitting at the bar telling the bartender that ‘if King Arthur was here, sir, I’d take him home so hard’, and why he’d woken up at five to eight that morning, in his bed, with Will passed out on top of him, his head aching like somebody had thrown a brick at it and his stomach churning.

 

“Shit,” he said, heaving himself out from under Will, and the next five minutes had passed in a whirl of clothes and shoes and Will’s snoring and his mother, Hunith, passing him toast around the bedroom door while he dressed. He’d kicked Will awake, said goodbye, and checked three times that he hadn’t forgotten his favourite book before he left his room for the final time.

 

His mother was waiting in the hallway and he kissed her on the cheek as he ran past, promising to visit on the weekend and not to use his magic unless it was an emergency. He raced up the road towards the bus with one of his trainer laces still untied. It wasn’t exactly the farewell he’d expected to give Ealdor, but then again, nothing in his life so far had really gone the way he’d expected it to.

 

And now – now he was on a bus heading away from Ealdor for the final time, to his new home in the heart of Camelot. Well, home was stretching it a little. Merlin had moved some of his boxes over to the building the previous weekend, but he’d promptly forgotten about them because he had job applications to fill out and television shows to watch and Will’s ‘goodbye Ealdor pub crawls’, as he termed them, to endure.

 

The flat had been suspiciously cheap, and Merlin was sure that there was some huge flaw in it that he hadn’t yet noticed about it, like a missing roof, or a rat infestation. It had a door that closed and locked, at least one of the power points worked, and the windows still had all their glass in them. That was better than the other places he’d visited, so he had happily agreed to rent it.

 

Thinking about it now, though, Merlin could see that that hadn’t been the smartest idea. He had barely been away from home before, not even on school camping trips – because he’d gone through a period of sleep-magicking that made it rather dangerous for him to sleep in a room with other people – and now, with Ealdor shrinking rapidly into the distance behind him and a backpack on his lap that was stuffed full of things his mother had had to remind him to take, he felt a little bit afraid. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go, because he knew being able to live on his own and support himself would help his mother out, but he didn’t quite feel ready for this.

 

He’d visited the city, of course, but that was when he was with Will and they had a plan that involved dancing and clubs and alcohol and girls (for Will) and boys (for Merlin). The city was easier to deal with when you had a pint of beer sloshing through your veins. It seemed smaller, then, because all you could comprehend was where you were at that moment and where you wanted to go next, and if you couldn’t think of where you wanted to go next it didn’t matter all that much, because you could just sit down on the kerb until things started making sense again. Sometimes, Merlin wondered whether his experience of clubbing was anything like how nights out were supposed to go.

 

But right now there was a significant lack of alcohol in his system, and the city seemed too big and too grey as they sped towards it. Merlin felt a rising urge to jump off the bus and run back to Ealdor, because at least they had trees there. But he couldn’t do that, not now. So instead, he looked back down at his book, staring at the curly script and the familiar yellowed pages, pretending, just for a moment, that he wasn’t on a bus heading towards Camelot. That instead, he was riding beside Arthur as he travelled around Albion; that he was lying close beside the King as he slept on the forest floor at night. He didn’t know if Arthur had truly lived – no one did, the truth was lost to time – but the stories were nonetheless a comfort to him. And if some of the men he’d dated happened to be blonde and bearded and muscular, then what of it? It was a hell of a lot safer to idolise dead mythical kings then it was to crush on Camelot’s celebrities. There was less chance of running into them and completely embarrassing himself, for starters.

 

Merlin often wondered what it would be like to meet King Arthur. He imagined it sometimes, when the weather was hot and he was lying in bed with sleep creeping around the edges of his mind. It was never the same situation – sometimes the man would be riding, and come across Merlin in the forest, or sometimes Merlin would walk around the Round Table and kiss Arthur in front of all his knights, just because he could. But Arthur was always powerful and blonde and in control, while the Merlin he imagined himself to be around the king was smooth and confident, and didn’t _ever_ trip over things, or lose control of his magic. It was his secret fantasy – the man he’d always wanted with the man he’d always wanted to be.

 

The phone in his pocket vibrated suddenly, pulling him out of his thoughts, and Merlin shoved his backpack sideways off his lap so that he could manoeuvre it out of his jeans. The old lady sitting next to him shot him a disgruntled look, clutching her hard leather handbag closer to her chest. Merlin pulled the bag quickly back onto his lap as he flipped open the phone.

 

 _Could always become Camelots #1 queer hooker if u ever need cash. Pete says theyre well into that._

 

Merlin grimaced. He didn’t want to know who Pete was, or why he was so well informed about Camelot’s prostitutes. Shielding the phone’s screen from the curious eyes of the lady to his right, he tapped out a reply.

 

 _I’ll find a job, prick. Remind me why I’m friends with u again?_

 _You <3 me. Plus i hav a cock._

And Merlin had to smile at that, because Will was crude, far too straight for his own good and he didn’t always understand Merlin, but Merlin did love him. They’d grown up together, and they were as close as brothers. Will had even wanted to change his surname to Emrys when they were seven, just so the government would see that they were related and ought to be living in the same house as each other.

 

Will was also the only one – apart from Merlin’s mother – who knew about his magic, even though he’d tried to keep it a secret. Merlin didn’t know what the authorities would do if they found out about him. All he knew was that actual magic, like the type that he had, had all but died out. He hadn’t met anyone else with his power. He didn’t know if anyone else like him existed.

 

“You’re special,” his mother had told him as a child. “But you have to keep that to yourself.”

 

And so Merlin had. He’d never told any of the kids in his classes that he was magic, and he’d never used it to do things that he could do by hand. Sometimes he couldn’t control it and it burst out of him, like the time when Will fell in the river, but most days he kept it hidden away. It didn’t feel right to keep it secret, though, not when there was so much he could use it for, and he’d mentioned that to his mother several times.

 

“It’s not your time,” she’d said sadly. “It’s not a time of magic anymore, Merlin. But maybe it will be again someday.” Merlin had hoped so, but as the years passed, he’d come to realise that if there had been a time in which magic was accepted, it was a time long past. 

 

The bus driver braked suddenly as the traffic lights turned red and Merlin was jolted forward in his seat. He clutched at the handrail on the back of the chair in front of him with one hand and held his book close to his chest with the other, trying to stop it from slipping onto the mud-splattered floor of the bus. The lady next to him gave him an odd look, her eyes wide behind her silver-framed glasses. Merlin supposed that he must look a little strange, sitting there with his fingers clenched tight around the battered cover, but he didn’t loosen his grip until he was sure the bus had stopped. He _loved_ that book. He didn’t want to risk ruining by accident. He knew that he was a little obsessed with it; that it was probably going to make it impossible to find anyone to settle down with in real life, because none of them would live up to how Merlin pictured King Arthur, but he honestly couldn’t bring himself to care.

 

Will, on the other hand, cared a great deal. He told Merlin on several occasions that he was an idiot, that he should ‘go find someone you can actually fuck, mate, and forget this Arthur ponce,’ and he’d even tried to burn Merlin’s copy, until Merlin got so angry that he accidentally moved the whole house several feet to the left. Because when it came down to it, it wasn’t just because of King Arthur that Merlin loved the story. A large part of it was King Arthur, sure, and Merlin would probably throw the book into the back of his cupboard and never look at it again if King Arthur suddenly turned up in Ealdor, but there was more to the book than that. Merlin loved the adventures, the courtly manners and the loyalty and the grace of it all, as well. People today just weren’t like that. _Life_ today just wasn’t like that.

 

It wasn’t, Merlin knew, that he didn’t belong in his own life. It was more that he sometimes felt as though his life wasn’t all that it could be. It was an unnerving feeling, and one that he’d tried to ignore, but as the years went by it sat in the back of his mind – not growing, as such, but simply refusing to leave. He felt as though there was a way he could be better, be all that he could be and all that, but he didn’t know what it was, or how he could even begin to achieve it.

“It’s called a mid-life crisis, mate,” Will had said. “It means your life is half over. Bad luck.”

 

Merlin had laughed along with him, but he’d known that this was something else. It was something Will didn’t feel, and something that Will, close though they were, couldn’t understand.

 

Merlin stared out the window, watching the last of the fields race past beside the bus. Perhaps he’d find what he was looking for in Camelot. It was a new place, and Merlin could be a new person there. He’d get a job he could actually keep, he’d fix up his flat and perhaps find a golden-haired man to curl up in bed with each night, and everything else would fall into place. He smiled, satisfied, and at that moment everything went to hell.

 

There was a bang, and the bus rocked wildly on its axles. Merlin cried out and scrabbled at the seat beneath him, trying to find something to hold onto. Something flashed golden-yellow, and a there was a low, rough noise, like the roar of a plane taking off.  Merlin felt his magic jump inside his chest, responding to something that he didn’t recognise.

 

It felt strange, to have something inside him that was acting of its own accord, that he couldn’t control with the careful precision with which he controlled his limbs and his head and the rest of his body. It didn’t feel much like it was his magic, though. Merlin knew what his magic felt like – it was familiar, and Merlin could always feel its edges when he used it, lines of power stretching out from his body and pulsing hot through his veins. But this magic felt different. It was cold and alien, as though someone had punched into his chest and dragged the magic out, or pushed their own magic into his body beside his own.

 

Merlin jerked wildly as he felt the seat beneath his body vanish, leaving him suspended in the air, and for a second all he could feel was light and heat and the book clutched against his chest and the strap of his backpack wrapped tight around his wrist. It was as if the whole world had fallen away, and he’d been caught at the edge of it, not quite falling but not quite safe, either. He couldn’t see the bus, or the other passengers. He couldn’t see anything but the light, and that was fading now as well, giving way to a deep black that dropped down upon Merlin until he was covered by it; until he couldn’t remember how it felt to see.

 

And then there was a pressure around his head like someone was pushing down on it. Merlin couldn’t breathe, and his brain was telling him that it needed oxygen, only he knew that the whole world had vanished, so there wasn’t any left to have. He slipped into unconsciousness just as he felt his back hit the ground.

 

***

 

The first thing he noticed was the noise. Or rather, the lack of it. The world had never been this quiet. Not even when they’d gone hiking in the forest, just him and his mother, and Merlin had fallen over every tree branch there was and had vowed that he’d never, ever do anything like that again – even then you could still hear planes every so often, and cars passing by on the road off to the north. Here, there was the sound of birds, and the rustle of trees, but beyond that, there was nothing.

 

Merlin blinked, looking around himself. The light was dim, but he could see that he was lying in what looked like a forest, the trees thick-trunked, with low-hanging branches. The ground was soft and damp beneath his body and there was a coppery smell mixed in with the heavy scent of the earth. The bus was nowhere to be seen.

 

He sat up and held a hand up to his aching head, wondering what had happened. Even though he’d spent his whole life using magic, it still surprised him with what it could do. It was one of the reasons (the other being that he simply wasn’t any good with numbers) why he’d never taken any of the subjects like physics at school, because he couldn’t bring himself to sit there and learn a set of rules that he knew weren’t quite right, because magic managed to break every single one of them, every time he used it.

 

Merlin looked around again, but he couldn’t see the road that the bus had been driving along. He supposed that the swirl of power he’d felt must have been some sort of teleportation spell, or something. He didn’t think that it was his own magic that had done this, but he didn’t know what else it could have been. His magic usually only acted out when he was in danger, and he wondered whether that meant that the bus had crashed. He bit his lip, worried. The bus had been full of people and they’d been moving fast. A crash at that speed would probably be a serious one.

 

Merlin leant back against the trunk of the tree, crossing his legs beneath him. At least he still had his backpack, he thought, dragging it into his lap and reaching into the pocket. He would just call Will, or his mother, or the emergency services, and they’d work out where he was and how he should go about getting back. He could try using a spell, he supposed, but the magic didn’t seem familiar and he didn’t want to leave parts of himself behind. He’d read Harry Potter. That sort of thing was just nasty.

 

But when he flipped open his phone, there wasn’t any reception. He waved it around wildly in the air for a few minutes, cursing, but there was no change.

“Shit,” he said, tucking it reluctantly back into his backpack. He must have travelled further away then he’d thought. A small voice in his head told him that he could be hundreds of miles from anywhere, but he didn’t think that listening to that voice would really help him all that much right now.

“Shit,” he said again, because swearing was good. It was better than panicking. He looked down at his backpack, thinking. All the survival books he’d read said the same thing: if you get lost from your group, stay where you are. But Merlin doubted that that applied to his situation – his group was on a bus somewhere, probably crashed, and Merlin didn’t think they’d be in a hurry to go looking for a pale, skinny boy who mysteriously vanished mid-trip. They probably thought he was a ghost.

 

No, he’d just have to walk until he found something resembling civilisation, or until he got reception back on his phone. He stood up, pulling out his penknife and swinging his bag onto his back. His father had left the knife to Merlin when he’d died, along with a tiny carving of a dragon, its wooden spikes worn down from all the times Merlin had run his fingers over them.

 

He pressed the blade against the trunk of the tree, gouging out an X in the wood. He’d just walk in a straight line from here, he decided, and if he didn’t find anything he could always turn around and come back again. Though there didn’t really seem to be any point in coming back here, he thought, taking one last look around the clearing. There was nothing to suggest he’d be able to get back to the bus from this particular spot.

 

He flicked the knife closed, shoved it back into his pocket and turned towards the place where the trees looked the sparsest, the forest curving dark and quiet over his head as he set off.

 

***

 

Two hours later, Merlin was starting to worry. He still hadn’t found any signs of civilisation, his legs were aching, and he could feel the sunlight sinking into his skin, reddening it, despite the fact that it was filtered by the canopy above him.

 

He shifted his backpack around on his back, trying to stop the straps from digging quite so hard into his shoulders. The sun was high in the sky now and Merlin wondered what would happen if he didn’t find any houses before dark. He could start fires with his magic – he’d done it often enough – but if he fell asleep it would probably burn down half the forest before he could stop it. But then again, sleeping alone in the darkness, in the middle of an unknown wood, didn’t really seem like a favourable alternative.

 

The small voice in his head came back again after that, telling him that things really weren’t looking so good, and Merlin was almost beginning to believe it when the forest started to thin out. He smiled, because that was _definitely_ a good sign, and was just about to tug his phone back out of his backpack when he saw the castle.

Castle, he thought. And then he stopped, because _castle._ He didn’t remember there being any castles in Camelot. Will would have mentioned it. He would have _seen_ it, for god’s sake. He hadn’t been _that_ drunk when he’d visited the city.

 

But there was a castle in front of him now, a huge, pale, stone thing, with actual red-gold flags on the battlements, whipping in the breeze. Below the castle there seemed to be some sort of a town, only it had smoke billowing gently from chimneys and everything seemed to be wooden and Merlin didn’t know where in the world he was, but it certainly wasn’t Camelot.

 

In fact, he thought as he made his way down through the trees towards the town, it didn’t look like any sort of place he’d ever heard of. Perhaps it was one of those theme parks where everything was old and everyone wore costumes. That must be it.

 

He stopped again as he reached the bottom of the hill, and a man rode past him on a horse. In chain mail. It was definitely a theme park then, Merlin decided. God, this day was getting stranger and stranger.

 

He walked along the road leading up to the gates, figuring that even a theme park had to have some sort of a phone. People got heatstroke at those things, all the time, and they’d need some way of calling for help. He looked up to see that there was a lady coming towards him carrying a basket, her clothes plain brown and old-fashioned.

“Excuse me,” Merlin said. “Which town is this?”

 

The lady looked at him as though she wasn’t quite sure whether he was being serious. “Camelot,” she said after a moment. Merlin blinked.

“No it’s not,” he said after a moment. “There’s no castle in Camelot. Camelot has cars and office buildings.”

The lady stared at him for a second, holding her basket to her chest and frowning, like he’d just told her the sky was green. Merlin watched in bemusement as she backed away from him and then walked quickly along the road towards the town gates. He shook his head, deciding that he’d just have to find a phone on his own, and started walking along the road in the same direction as the lady had fled.

 

When he reached the gate, he noticed that there were guards standing on either side of it, wearing the same type of chainmail that he’d seen on the man who rode past him earlier. They frowned fiercely at him as he passed them, and Merlin grinned. This place was _good_ , he thought. If he ever worked out where it was, he’d have to bring Will back here.

 

He walked beneath the high arch of the gate, then stopped and stared, his mouth falling open, because everything just looked so _medieval_. He didn’t know how he was going to find a phone, or a map, or anything that would help him to work out where he was in a place like this. He hadn’t been overseas before, but he had discovered a stack of old National Geographics in the study cupboard one winter that had images of places that looked a little bit like this one. The towns they showed were all cobbled streets and wooden houses and horse-drawn carts, as though they had dropped out of time in the seventeenth century, and someone had found them and pushed them back into the twenty-first by mistake. But even those photos, strange though they were, hadn’t shown anywhere as completely and utterly foreign as this place. The road beneath his feet was made of actual stone, there were men wandering past in robes, sporting beards that looked as though they’d never seen a set of clippers, and the houses around him looked like they’d collapse if you pushed against their walls. They were nothing like the solid, concrete-and-cement buildings of Ealdor. There were tethered animals in the marketplace off to his right, and what looked like an actual blacksmith’s forge to his left, a fire roaring in the centre and the scent of metal wafting out from under its low roof.

 

He moved further along the road, slinging his backpack around and clutching it to his chest. He felt like he needed something to hold onto, because his magic had been strange before, but it had never been _this_ strange. It was one thing, he knew, to travel to a foreign country, but quite another to appear suddenly in one. He didn’t know whether the people were friendly, or whether this was all some sort of an elaborate hoax, or whether he’d just fallen asleep on the bus and was dreaming the entire thing. He pinched himself roughly on the arm, just to make sure. No, he thought, wincing. Definitely not a dream.

 

But there was something else different about the town too, Merlin realised. Everyone he passed seemed to avoid catching his eye and no one was walking close to him, even though the crowd was pressed firmly together at every other point in the marketplace. It was as though no one wanted to associate with him – as though they were _scared_ of him, just as the woman he’d talked to outside the gates seemed to be. Merlin supposed that his clothes might have had something to do with it, but skinny jeans and a  dark blue t-shirt wasn’t, in his opinion, particularly menacing attire. For the tenth time in as many minutes, Merlin wondered just where exactly he was, because it was quickly becoming apparent that he wasn’t in Camelot, or Ealdor, or anywhere near them. Nowhere near Ealdor had markets like these, with animals tied up outside the stalls, and Merlin had never seen anyone dressed as these people were, with plain, dark, old-fashioned clothes. There were also no cars, no buses or trains or overhead powerlines or signs of technology at all. If it was a theme park, it was a very well-constructed one. Even the air smelled different, because beneath the scent of the marketplace there was no hint of petrol, or of any of the other smells that Merlin was used to.

 

There was a noise like cheering, or the sound of a crowd, off to his right. Merlin stopped walking, turning his head towards the noise. Perhaps it was a performance or something, he thought, one of those historical re-enactment things. He turned down a narrow street in the direction of the noise, hoping that would mean that there would be someone who would be willing to point him in the direction of home, or at least tell him where on earth he was. There were people standing in the doorways of the houses that he passed, but they did not greet him, and nor did they follow him towards the sound. Merlin wondered briefly whether he shouldn’t ask them what he was walking towards, in case it was a riot or something, but before he’d made up his mind to do so, the alleyway widened out into a square at the very base of the castle.

Merlin paused for a moment, looking up at it in awe. He hadn’t seen a castle up close before, and this one was like everything he imagined a castle would be – it had tall stone towers, crenelated walls, and it was built out of pale, moon-coloured stone slabs that looked bright in the midday sun.

 

There was a man standing on a balcony above the square, making some sort of a speech, and Merlin saw that the crowd of people packed into it were all staring up at him, as though he was someone important. He had a fierce expression on his face as he stared down over the people and he was wearing a crown, Merlin realised, so perhaps he was some sort of a ruler.

 

 Merlin looked around, wondering if the people were simply here to listen to him speak, and at that moment the crowd shifted and he saw – oh, god, was that an _executioner’s block?_ It was low and solid, and there was a man positioned on it, his head on one side. Merlin couldn’t see his face, but his body was held in place by two black-clothed men, and his shoulders were twitching, as though he was trying to get away. Merlin took a step forward, beginning to raise his hand – the man was obviously distressed, and Merlin _wouldn’t_ just stand there and watch him die – but the man on the balcony held out his hand before Merlin could act, and suddenly there was an axe swinging through the air above the man’s head. The crowd surged forward, obscuring Merlin’s view, but he could still hear the heavy thud of the blade hitting the wood, and the king’s voice in was loud in his ears. _Sorcerer_ , he said. _The penalty for sorcery is death_.

 

Merlin stood still for a moment, staring at the place where the axe had fallen. It had to be staged, didn’t it? But the white, wide-eyed faces of the crowd and the way the man’s body was sagging against the ground looked far, far too real for that.

 

He turned quickly and pushed his way back through the crowd, feeling sick. _Shit,_ he thought. There was a man _dead_ because of magic. Merlin had almost used magic to try and save him. He shoved against the wall of people surrounding him, forcing a path through. The man on the balcony was still speaking, but Merlin didn’t listen. He didn’t understand this place, and that was dangerous. He had to leave, to find a way to get home, back to Ealdor, where Will would be sitting in the pub hitting on girls and his mother would be in the garden hanging out washing. Those things were real. This – this town, with its killing and its odd scents and its strange people –wasn’t. It was just a place, a horrible place, yes, but one that Merlin didn’t have a name for, one that he couldn’t locate on a map. As long as it stayed anonymous, and as long as he got out of it as soon as possible, then there would still be a chance that it wasn’t real. That there wasn’t a bloodstained axe in the square behind him, and that the man on the balcony wasn’t really there, and wasn’t announcing a feast with the same breath he’d used to condemn a sorcerer to death.

 

Merlin slipped through a low stone arch, heading for the place where the crowd was the thinnest. It was only when he reached the stairs that he realised he’d managed to cross the square and that he was now inside the castle. He leant back against the cool stone of the passageway, trying to understand. They’d actually killed someone, right there in front of him, and the crowd had barely even made a noise as it happened, as though that sort of thing was ordinary. He didn’t know how that could be, because he hadn’t thought that there were any other sorcerers alive anymore. And even if there were, it wasn’t right - it couldn’t be normal - to just _kill_ them.

 

He shook his head and pushed himself upright from the wall. He didn’t like this place, he didn’t understand it, and the sooner he got out of it the better. He would just go back the way he came and find the clearing again, he thought. He had a vague idea of how the magic might have worked; he would try using it to send himself back to Ealdor. Adjusting his backpack, he turned back towards the archway, walking around the corner and -

“Ouch.” Merlin looked up to see that he’d collided hard with a woman and knocked her against the wall.

“Sorry,” he said quickly, holding out a hand to help her upright. But he’d misjudged how light she was and he pulled her too far, sending them both tumbling over onto the floor.

 

“Sorry,” he said again, trying to wriggle out from beneath her. She was laughing now and Merlin couldn’t help but laugh too.

“I’m Gwen,” she said between gasps.

 

“Merlin,” Merlin said, sticking out his hand to shake hers. She looked at it for a moment and then started laughing all over again, because they were still lying down and shaking hands lying down probably wasn’t normal here. It certainly wasn’t normal back in Ealdor. Merlin made a face.

 

“Where am I, anyway?” he asked once she’d stopped giggling and they’d both got themselves upright. “And don’t say Camelot, I know it isn’t.”

Gwen raised her eyebrows. “Camelot,” she said slowly. “Where else would we be?”

Merlin looked through the archway at the medieval-looking stalls and the dirt path functioning as a road.

 

“Australia?” he guessed. “I don’t know. But I’ve been to Camelot, and this isn’t it.”

Gwen stared at him for a second and then looked around at the castle, frowning. “It really _is_ Camelot,” she said, bending to pick up the linen she’d dropped. “Perhaps you’d better go see the physician, there might be something wrong with your head.” She bit her lip, looking at him with wide eyes. “Not that I’m saying you’re stupid, or anything,” she continued quickly. “It’s just that most people know where they are and if you don’t you’re probably not right. In the head.”

 

Merlin stared at her. “Right,” he said slowly. “Uh, thanks. I’ll do that.” He moved aside to let her walk past, and then continued along the passageway, rubbing the side of his head where he’d hit it against the ground. There was _definitely_ something wrong with this place.

 

***

 

Merlin supposed that revealing his magic to the physician probably wasn’t the best way to go about introducing himself, but he’d walked into the room just as the man was falling off the balcony and he couldn’t just let him die, if there was something that he could do to help. It had been the same with the time Will fell in the river, and Merlin had just let his instincts take hold and push the right magic out of him. His mother had understood when he told her about it later on, because it was _Will_ and Merlin would have revealed his magic to the whole world in order to save him.

 

But this time, it was for an old man he didn’t know in a place where magic was illegal and Merlin hadn’t even wanted to go see the physician, not really, but the castle guards had been staring at him suspiciously and so he’d decided that getting out of their sight was probably the smart thing to do. He’d spotted the physician’s chambers and thought that he could hide inside until they’d passed by.

 

“How did you do that?” the man asked incredulously, as soon as he’d righted himself from the bed. “And don’t you know that magic is illegal in Camelot, boy?”

“Yes, I know,” Merlin said weakly, because he remembered the execution all too well. “And I don’t know where this is, but it isn’t Camelot. Do you have a phone?”

“I can assure you that this is Camelot,” the man replied sternly, his eyebrows raised. “And if you continue to practice magic like that, Uther Pendragon will have your head.”

Merlin rubbed a hand across his face, because this day was already far too long and he just wanted a straight answer so that he could get home and – wait, what?

“Did you say Uther _Pendragon?_ ” he asked.

“Yes,” the man said, frowning.

“ _The_ Uther Pendragon?”

“Uther Pendragon, the king of Camelot.”

Merlin froze, trying to put together all the things he’d seen into some sort of order. Everyone insisting that this was Camelot, medieval-looking houses, livestock in the street, men in chainmail on horses, an execution, and now this man was insisting that _Uther Pendragon_ – as in the Uther Pendragon who fathered King Arthur – was king – either this was some very, _very_ elaborate hoax, or...

“I’m in Camelot,” Merlin breathed.

The man looked at him like he was a little bit thick. “Yes,” he said.

“No, I’m in _Camelot_ ,” Merlin said. “Not my Camelot, but _this_ Camelot.” He swung his bag off his back, ripping open the front pocket and brandishing his book in the old man’s face. The man reached out a hand to look at it, and Merlin snatched it back.

“Actually no, don’t look at that,” he said hastily, because if Uther was king then Arthur probably hadn’t been born yet, and Merlin shouldn’t be showing what was essentially a prophesy to the people who lived here. He pushed it back into his bag and looked back over at the man, wondering exactly how to explain what he’d just realised.

“I’m Merlin,” he said after a moment. “And I think… I think I’m from the future.”

***

 

The physician – Gaius, he said his name was – was actually remarkably knowledgeable on the subject of magic for someone who was living in a time when it was illegal. He had more books on the topic than Merlin had ever seen in his life. Merlin had tried to read them over Gaius’ shoulders, until the man had raised his eyebrows sternly and batted him away.

 

“It would take a very powerful spell to create that kind of shift in time,” Gaius said after a while, looking up from a dusty page. Merlin took his hand away from the wall (which he hadn’t been stroking, exactly, but it was a wall of Pendragon Camelot and Merlin wanted to see what it would feel like) and walked back over to Gaius.

“Can I get back?” he said. Gaius flipped through a couple of pages and then frowned.

“Yes, I believe so,” he said, and Merlin sighed with relief, because from what he’d gathered, he fit in even less here than he did in his own time. “But it’ll take time to find the right spell,” Gaius added. “The wrong one could do untold damage to both this time and yours.” Merlin nodded. That, at least, he could understand.

 

“I _will_ find it though, Merlin,” Gaius said quietly, looking over at Merlin. Merlin felt a surge of relief flood his chest at that – relief that someone else knew what was happening to him and relief that the physician was going to help him. He knew he was in Uther Pendragon’s Camelot, in the castle that Arthur would one day live in, and that every time he’d imagined this sort of thing it had been exciting and fun and brilliant. But Merlin was tired. He’d been shoved around, he’d watched an execution, he’d got lost in a forest and he was thousands of years away from home, and right now all he felt was relief that Gaius understood that, and that the man had shown him kindness.

 

***

 

Gaius had given Merlin one of his rooms, which Merlin was grateful for, even if he wasn’t quite sure what the mattress was made of and the bed felt sort of like it had been carved from stone. The old man had also eyed Merlin’s attire for a long moment and then given Merlin some clothes, muttering something about modesty. Merlin didn’t know what was immodest about jeans, really, but apparently they weren’t appropriate for wandering around the castle in. He kept his scarf when he changed, though because there would _never_ be a time when scarves weren’t fashionable.

 

It was only once he’d pulled on an old tunic, one that had an earthy, clean sort of a scent, and had curled beneath the sheets that night that he let himself think about where he was. He’d seen Uther Pendragon.  He was in Arthur’s Camelot  - not exactly in Arthur’s time, of course, but it was closer than Merlin had ever dreamt of getting. He didn’t know whether this was real, or whether he had somehow ended up inside the story, but he found that it didn’t really matter. It _felt_ real enough now, with the sheets tucked around his shoulders and the mattress rough beneath his back, and Merlin knew that he couldn’t hate this place, not anymore. It was dangerous and foreign and Merlin had a feeling that he wouldn’t fit in it at all, but he had been given the chance to brush against the edges of King Arthur’s story - the story that had shaped his life - and he couldn’t hate that.

 

He rolled onto his side, tugging the scratchy blanket further up his chest, and wondered exactly how he’d gotten here. It couldn’t have been his doing - and okay, yes, Merlin knew that of the strange things that occurred when he was around, ninety nine percent of them were his fault. And that of that ninety nine percent, at least half of them were _involuntarily_ his fault. But he knew that he hadn’t done this. He didn’t know _how_ to do this, and he didn’t think that there was enough power in his body to do it. Perhaps there was another sorcerer, Merlin thought sleepily. If there was, he’d have to thank them for this someday. And with that thought still swirling around in his mind, he slipped quietly into sleep.

 

***

 

 When Merlin came out into Gaius’ chambers the next morning, the man shoved several bottles into his arms and told him to take them to various parts of the castle while he kept looking through his books for the spell Merlin would need. Merlin went without complaint, because he was in medieval Camelot and there was no way that he was going to miss out on an opportunity to explore it.

 

“Try not to interfere with anything,” Gaius said as Merlin hurried towards the door. Merlin made a face back at him, because of course he wasn’t going to interfere. He’d seen enough time travel movies to know that messing around in the past was all kinds of dangerous. 

 

But even so, he couldn’t stop himself from trailing his fingers along the walls of the passageway as he walked along it and grinning widely at the maidservants who passed by. He wondered if one of them would look after King Arthur when he was born, and whether the man would walk along these same hallways and look out of the same windows as Merlin did. It was exhilarating, to know that he was this close to the place that he’d always dreamt of going; that he was this close to the man he’d always wanted to meet. He wondered whether Will would believe him if Merlin told him about it when got back home. Probably not, Merlin thought. Will was very selective about what spells he believed in – if it was something he’d seen Merlin doing, he would admit that it was real. If Merlin did it by himself and told Will about it later, the man would usually just laugh and tell him to stop bragging.

 

Merlin managed to deliver Gaius’ potions without incident and he barely interacted with their recipients, just in case this _was_ part of history and he said something wrong and erased half the of the population of 21 st century Camelot by mistake. He knew it was probably an irrational worry – he’d interacted with dozens of people already, so any damage he was likely to do had probably already been done, but he was wary nonetheless.

 

 He walked back down the stairs from the final set of chambers he’d needed to visit. Gaius would probably take a while to find anything worth using, so there was no point in going straight back to the man’s chambers. Merlin looked down at himself, considering. He was wearing slightly-too-large but definitely medieval-looking clothes - ones that had belonged to Gaius, or to Gaius’ last apprentice, he supposed. He figured that he blended in enough to risk exploring the rest of the castle, as long as he stayed out of the way and didn’t talk to anyone.

 

He peered around the passageway he was standing in, wondering where to go first, then paused as he heard the faint sound of raised voices from outside. It sounded as though there were several people shouting, and Merlin walked down the stone steps towards the noise, wondering what the commotion was about.

 

It was just as he was rounding the edge of the castle wall that Merlin saw him. Well, _them_ actually, because there were several other men – knights, Merlin realised – standing around, but Merlin didn’t pay any attention to them. He was too busy looking at the man in front of him. He was – he was fucking fit, as Will would say. And, judging by the number of swords he was carrying, probably also a knight. The man’s hair was light blonde and just long enough for him to have to flick it out of his eyes every so often, with a toss of his head that Merlin found both irritating and really damn _hot_. He was muscled and golden, with a smug grin plastered across his face, as though he knew full well what he wanted and that he would be able to get it. The man was built in a way that made Merlin want to – not climb him, exactly, but certainly push him down and run his lips over the man’s skin, until he was squirming and moaning and hard beneath Merlin’s hands.

 

Merlin stared at the man’s lips, which were full and red, knowing he should probably turn around and go back the way he had come, before he did something stupid like talking to the knight. But he couldn’t bring himself to move. If the man grew a beard, he’d be _exactly_ Merlin’s type.

 

The man glanced over at him, his grin still firmly in place, and then raised his arm and threw something that was sharp-looking and silver towards – towards _another man._ Merlin blinked as he took in the rest of the situation. The man was throwing knives at people. _Actual_ knives, with pointed tips and everything. Merlin knew that he shouldn’t really be surprised - this was a medieval society, after all,  and that sort of thing was probably normal - but the other man looked like he was struggling beneath his shield and he felt sure that the blonde man was going to miss the target at any second now.

 

So Merlin opened his mouth and threw his non-intervention plan out of the window, because he _couldn’t_ just stand by and let the blonde man torture people, even if he looked absolutely gorgeous while doing it. He called out, his brain supplying words that he threw out of his mouth without actually stopping to consider whether they were the smartest ones to be using. It wasn’t his fault though, because he was a bit distracted by the sun, which was shining off the man’s hair and bathing his golden skin, and just generally making him look a bit too much like a god and not enough like a spoilt brat.

 

Because Merlin realised that – like many of the stunningly pretty people he’d met – the man was acting like an absolute tosser. And because his mouth had decided it didn’t need to wait around for his brain to catch up, he found himself telling the man as much.

“You’re a-“ he started, before realising that he should probably check how dead using the word _fuck_ would get him before he started tossing it into conversations. “A prat,” he finished, because that sounded like the type of insult they would use.

 

The man was in front of him now, staring at him with disbelief. “What?” he said, stepping closer, until Merlin could see every one of the man’s blonde eyelashes.

 

“You’re a prat,” Merlin said again, only he didn’t sound so sure this time, because the man’s blue gaze was pinning him in place and he was close enough to touch, and he certainly didn’t _look_ like a prat. He looked like the sort of man Merlin would have wanked over if he’d seen him on the front of a magazine. Merlin swallowed. He _really_ didn’t need to be thinking about that right now.

 

The knight was speaking again and Merlin tried to refocus his mind, because the man’s tone was derisive as he looked Merlin over, and Merlin had a feeling that he was getting insulted. And okay, taking a swing at the man probably wasn’t the wisest thing he could have done, but the man was acting unbelievably arrogant, and Merlin wasn’t going to stand there and let himself be walked all over.  He only realised after the man had Merlin’s arm pinned painfully behind his back that there might have been a _reason_ for his arrogance, and that – since battles and things were sort of a big deal back in medieval times – his skill as a fighter might have had something to do with it.

 

Even so, Merlin thought, jumping slightly as he was pulled backwards until his back was pressed against the knight’s own, the man was completely overconfident.It wasn’t as though he was the king, or anything. He voiced this last thought aloud, because he _really_ needed to keep his mind off the way the man’s thighs felt against the backs of his own.

 

“Who do you think you are?” he asked, trying to pull his arm free. “The king?”

 

“No,” the man said, pulling him closer. “I’m his son, Arthur.”

“You’re _Arthur Pendragon_?” Merlin gasped, twisting his head around, and Arthur stared incredulously down at him.

“You can’t address me like that,” he spat, and it was just as well that the man chose that moment to twist Merlin’s arm so that he collapsed to the ground, because Merlin didn’t think he would ever have been able to live down the fact that he fainted in Arthur Pendragon’s arms.

 

***

 

After he got out of the dungeons, where he’d woken up after his encounter with the prince, Merlin decided to avoid Arthur for the next few days. He also tried his hardest not to think about him, either, because whenever he did his feelings started bumping clumsily around inside his chest, making it impossible to get any of the tasks Gaius had set for him done. He was confused, and shocked, but beneath all that there was a deep sense of disappointment and Merlin didn’t want to acknowledge that right now. If he acknowledged that, it would be acknowledging that the Arthur he’d met _was_ the Arthur of legend, and that the beautiful, selfless king he’d spent his childhood dreaming of was simply a man - and a rather horrid one at that.

 

And then Merlin would have to reconcile the Arthur that he’d built up in his head with this living, breathing man, and he didn’t exactly know how to start. Merlin had never imagined Arthur to be young, let alone his own age, and it was difficult to look at the prince, so fresh and golden and arrogant and - Merlin admitted reluctantly, gorgeous - and compare him to the king that Merlin had read about, the one who led armies and was loved by his people and ruled over the whole of Albion. He didn’t know whether this Arthur had it within himself to become that person, that king, or whether Merlin had simply built the man up inside his mind to something that he would never become.

 

So he stayed away from the prince and instead spent two long days wandering around Gaius’ chambers, tidying up the man’s workbench and bookshelves. It was only when Gaius tried to persuade him to clean out his leech tank that Merlin resisted.

“I’m not touching that,” he said, looking at the tank in disgust. “And you can get rid of them anyway,” he added. “Bloodletting doesn’t work.” Gaius raised an eyebrow at him.

“Keep things like that to yourself, boy,” he said sternly, and Merlin sighed, walking back into his room before he revealed anything else he shouldn’t.

 

He spent the rest of that afternoon on his laptop, which was still on full battery, trying to work out whether he could use magic to somehow send an email through to his mother or Will. He knew that his mother wouldn’t be overly worried if he didn’t answer the phone at the flat, because he didn’t even know if it was connected yet, but he wanted to have some contact with Ealdor, just so that he’d know it was still there. There was no way of knowing if he was successful at sending the thing through, however, and after the fifteenth attempt he turned the computer off and flopped down onto his bed.

 

Something poked him sharply in the small of his back and he rolled over to see that he’d landed on top of his backpack. Sitting up on the bed, he pulled it open, trying to remember what he’d brought along. He already knew that he had his laptop, which he would have to keep hidden. It was probably just as dangerous to have in his possession as a book of spells, if only because it didn’t look at all medieval. Uther would probably think it was some kind of sorcerer’s tool if he ever saw it.

 

He tipped the bag upside down, sending a cascade of condoms tumbling into his lap. Merlin frowned. He really hoped that that was Will’s idea and not his mother’s. He’d seen Will skulking around near the backpack on the last afternoon before Merlin had left, though, and he supposed that he really should have expected something like this. Merlin sighed, stuffing them all back into the outside pocket of his bag. In all of the imagined scenarios in which he’d met Arthur Pendragon, he would have needed most of those condoms. But _this_ Arthur… well, Merlin wanted to punch him in the face just as badly as he wanted to strip him naked.

 

Of course, it was on the same day he had that thought that he first saved Arthur’s life.

 

***

 

The first time he did it, it was basically an accident. He didn’t mean to drop the chandelier on the witch, but his magic did that thing where it jumped out of his chest again, and then his brain saw _dagger_ and _Arthur_ and told him to pull Arthur out of the way before he remembered that dagger and Arthur was a combination he’d been hoping for ever since he’d met the prat. 

 

He didn’t remember much after that. Uther had thanked him, his gaze fierce as he took in the witch on the ground, but Merlin had been too worried that everyone had noticed his magic to pay any attention to what the king was saying. He left the hall soon after and didn’t stop running until he reached the very depths of the castle.

 

He slumped down against the wall, adrenaline and magic still pumping through his veins. He’d saved Arthur’s life. He’d _saved Arthur’s life_ , and he wasn’t supposed to interfere. He wasn’t even supposed to be there, in that room, but Arthur would be dead right now if he hadn’t been. It didn’t make any sense. Merlin hadn’t even wanted to save his life. Maybe that Arthur was supposed to have died. Maybe another Arthur had taken his place. Maybe that Arthur wasn’t _the_ Arthur Pendragon, the one from the legend. Maybe –

 

“Merlin,” a low voice said, cutting off his train of thought. Merlin looked up, startled, because there were three people who knew his name in Camelot and none of them had a voice like that. But the passageway was empty.

 

“Merlin,” the voice said again. Merlin jumped up, looking wildly around. The voice seemed to be coming from around the corner, so he walked to the end of the passage and peered cautiously around it. There were guards playing some sort of a dice game and beyond that a dark flight of stairs where he supposed the voice must be coming from. He held out his hand, pulled his magic from within his chest and distracted the guards - who seemed to be thick sorts, judging by the way they chased the magical bouncing dice along the passageway - and then slipped down the stairs and into the darkness, wondering who was down there. He hoped it wasn’t some sort of a medieval serial killer. He didn’t much fancy being disembowelled.

 

It was funny, Merlin thought later. That guess wasn’t actually all that far off.

 

***

 

“Holy shit,” Merlin said. The dragon blinked at him, its claws tapping against the stone beneath his body.

“Merlin,” it said, and Merlin almost dropped the torch he was holding. “Holy _shit,_ ” he said again, because he was staring at an actual dragon, a real live one that talked and flew and probably breathed fire and everything. Merlin hadn’t even known they existed outside of computer games.

 

But then the dragon started talking and Merlin sort of wished that he was facing one of the ones from the games he’d played, because at least those dragons made some sort of sense. This one had probably been on its own for too long. He seemed to think – Merlin paused, frowning. He was terrible at riddles, but from what he could gather, the dragon seemed to think that he was _supposed_ to be here. That it hadn’t been some sort of a magical accident – which Merlin had decided was the most likely cause of his arrival in old Camelot – and instead was, well, destiny. That it was Merlin’s destiny to protect Arthur. Merlin shook his head. It was like talking to a horoscope.

“That isn’t right,” he protested. There was no way that this could be his destiny, because this wasn’t even his time. There was no way that his path and Arthur’s could run together when Merlin’s path started in the twenty first century and, if he had anything to say about it, would finish there too.

 

The dragon merely laughed. “We cannot choose our destiny, young warlock,” it said, and Merlin wanted to throw something at its smug face, because destiny hadn’t brought him here. It wasn’t destiny that he ended up in Old Camelot, any more than it was destiny when he walked into the grocery store and bought a box of cereal. But he couldn’t explain that to the dragon, because words like _grocery store_ and _cereal_ would be beyond it, and Merlin couldn’t find the right ones to explain that this wonderful, magical destiny the dragon talked about? It didn’t exist. Merlin had read the book, and he knew the legend back to front, and that was as good as a prophecy.

 

“You’re wrong,” he said, but the dragon simply turned its back and took off, its wings beating hard against the cool air. Merlin frowned, kicking a piece of rock at the place where it had been sitting. Stupid dragon. The only future he wanted to see for himself was one where he avoided Arthur until he could get back to Ealdor. He’d live out his life with his mother and Will close by, find a lovely, skinny brunette man to settle down with and develop a healthy fear of travelling on buses. And as for the book about King Arthur – well, he wouldn’t read that again for a very, very long time.

 

***

 

That plan worked out marvellously in his head, of course, but when he finally got back to Gaius’ chambers and thought of a suitable excuse for why his clothes were covered in soot and smelled like raw meat, it became clear that he ought to start paying attention when people were talking to him.

 

“I’m _what?_ ”

Gaius frowned at him. “Arthur’s manservant, Merlin, do you listen to anything I say? It’s an important position, and it’ll keep you occupied until I find the spell to get you home.”

Merlin stared at him in disbelief. “I can’t be Arthur’s manservant, he’s a prat!” A gorgeous, gorgeous prat who’d destroyed Merlin’s childhood dreams. Merlin sometimes wondered whether other people had as many things go wrong in their lives as he did in his, or whether he was just extremely unlucky. He had a feeling that it was the latter.

 

Gaius looked up from the book he was flicking through. “He’s also the prince, Merlin,” he said. “It would be best if you did as he said.”

 

Merlin groaned. He didn’t know what being Arthur’s manservant involved, exactly, but he had a feeling that it would be a lot closer to slavery than any job he’d had before. And he’d be under the control of Arthur, of all people. Arthur who’d physically assaulted him and then thrown him into the dungeons. _Great,_ Merlin thought. This was going to be just brilliant.

 

***

 

When he first arrived at Arthur’s chambers, it became apparent that whatever he was going to get paid for this (and Merlin suspected, from what he’d gathered of medieval Camelot, that he wasn’t) it wouldn’t be enough. He had to help Arthur put on his armour, of all things, which had gone well all those times he’d imagined it while growing up, but in reality was almost impossible to do. For one thing, Arthur wouldn’t stay still for more than two seconds, and whenever Merlin’s fingers accidentally brushed against his skin he’d jump like a startled animal and glare at Merlin as though he’d just been stabbed rather than touched. Merlin was seriously considering just using his magic to force the man to stay still, only then he probably wouldn’t be able to talk, either, and Merlin had found that it was almost impossible to remember what an ass the man was when he had his mouth shut.

 

So instead he tried hard not to notice Arthur’s glaring, or the way his jaw looked, all shadowed and beautiful, when it was clenched in annoyance, and just focused on trying to get all of the pieces of armour on in all the right places. And if Arthur yelled at him for forgetting exactly where one or two of them were supposed to go, and for leaving his sword up at the castle rather than bringing it down to the field, well it was hardly his fault. He didn’t understand these things. The closest he’d even been to a sword, before now, was when he’d seen one behind glass in a museum. And that one time he dressed up as the main guy from Gladiator for a party, and even that costume hadn’t involved armour so much as a loincloth and sandals. Merlin didn’t remember much from that particular night.

 

But that was the thing about Camelot, Merlin thought. He had learnt during his first few days that he simply didn’t fit in there. It wasn’t his clothes, because those were perfectly ordinary, although Gaius had given him a strange look when he’d walked out of his room with his scarf wrapped around his neck over his borrowed tunic. It was more the fact that he stared at everything, because even if Arthur wasn’t exactly (or at all) like Merlin had imagined him, Merlin was still in the middle of the story he’d spent half his childhood reading, and that was _amazing_.

 

The first time he’d seen Uther’s ward, Morgana, he’d dropped the bucket of water he’d been holding, because even though he was as far from straight as Will was from settling down and having children, he still had to admit that she was absolutely beautiful. He had seen her sitting behind Uther in the hall, her gaze drifting over the nobles seated before the throne, and Merlin thought that she looked like the sort of woman that movie directors would kit out in skintight black leather and drape over cars with two pistols in her thigh holsters. When she walked in to the hall that night, the eyes of half the knights flicked over to her, and Merlin was sure that they didn’t stop staring until she’d left the room after the feast had finished. Of course, it was only when he got back to his room that he realised that that was _Morgana,_ and he was halfway through resolving that he’d have to keep an eye on her when he realised that he wasn’t going to be here for long enough to keep an eye on anyone, and that saving everyone and killing off all of Arthur’s eventual enemies wasn’t what he was here for, no matter what the dragon said.

 

But that, right there, was the problem, Merlin thought as he lay in bed after his first day of work. He didn’t know when the events he’d read about in the legend would start to happen; he didn’t know whether the people who would become important later on were being influenced even now, or whether things were going to change now that he was here. He had the whole future of this world on the pages in his hands, but he still didn’t know the answers.

 

He rolled over onto his back, deciding that he’d just have keep his head down until Gaius had found the spell. He’d do the chores that Arthur set him and he’d try not to notice anything that wasn’t right in front of him. It would probably make him seem like a bit of an idiot, but at least it would keep him from imagining things to be more significant than they were.

 

Even so, he noticed enough about Camelot to ensure he was constantly confused. _I don’t understand this place_ became his mantra for the first week. By the second week, he’d progressed to _I don’t understand Arthur_. By the third, he’d given up on those two, and simply muttered _why_? to himself every time he was asked to do something particularly obscure.

 

He ran into Gwen during his first week as Arthur’s servant, when he was taking water from the well down in the courtyard up to Arthur’s chambers, and it was largely thanks to her that he managed not to seem completely incompetent before the prince. Not that Merlin cared, of course, because he still had his _go home, find non-Arthuresque guy_ plan firmly in mind. But he still didn’t want to seem like an idiot. He’d done all of those internet IQ tests. He knew he wasn’t.

 

Gwen had taken one of the buckets from his hands and helped him to carry it back up the stone steps.

 

“Are things going alright with Arthur?” she’d asked, as they walked along the passageway. Merlin had stared at her dolefully for a moment and then explained that the only thing he really knew about his duties was how to pour Arthur’s drink at the feasts. And even that wasn’t as simple as it should have been, because Arthur moved around so much that Merlin ended up getting as much wine in the prince’s lap as he did in the man’s cup. Gwen had laughed at that, and then she’d told him that she could probably help him out with learning how to put on Arthur’s armour.

 

“So how come you know so much about this stuff, anyway?” he asked as Gwen showed him that the piece of armour that he’d been trying to fit around his arm actually went around his neck. She shrugged.

“Blacksmith’s daughter,” she said, showing him how to tighten one of the straps beneath his arm.

“Really? That’s brilliant,” Merlin replied, because he’d wanted to be a blacksmith for a whole summer after that movie with the pirates had come out. Gwen stared at him.

 

“You’re very strange,” she said. “Not – not that that’s a bad thing. Strange  can be good. You’re the good sort of strange.” She blushed and Merlin blinked at her.

“Uh, thank you?” he said. Gwen was - he cut off that train of thought as something niggled at the back of his mind. There was something about her that wasn’t quite – oh. _Oh._

“Gwen?” he said slowly, his fingers tightening on the breastplate that he was holding. She looked over at him, tucking several of her dark curls behind her ear. “Is… is your name short for anything?”

“It’s Guinevere,” she said. “But most people call me Gwen.”

 

Merlin dropped the breastplate.

 

“Merlin?” Gwen asked, staring at him in confusion. “Merlin, what is it?”

 

Merlin picked up the pieces of armour from off the table and spun towards the door, almost dropping the helmet in his haste.

 

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “I – I’d better go and find Arthur.”

 

It was only once he was outside, with the sun reflecting brightly off the metal in his arms, that he realised that panicking and running probably hadn’t been the best way he could have reacted. But he had been talking to Arthur’s _future wife_. The Gwen who’d fallen on him, the Gwen who was the daughter of a blacksmith – that was _Guinevere of Camelot_. The story hadn’t said that she was Morgana’s maidservant. He’d never expected that she had been here from the very beginning, that she had seen Arthur grow up.

 

Merlin slowed down and dropped onto a bench in the courtyard outside the castle, trying to get it straight in his head. He’d envied her whenever he’d read the book, because she got to sleep beside Arthur and hold his hand and grow old with him. She was the one that he would look for when he returned from battle, and she was the one he would hold to him each night. She wasn’t exactly like he’d imagined her to be, but then, neither was Arthur. Merlin bit his lip, thumping the heel of his boot against the stone ground. He considered whether he would still want to marry Arthur now, if he was in her place, knowing what the man was really like, and he found that his answer was closer to no than to yes. It was strange, then, that Gwen would choose to accept his hand. Perhaps she saw something in him that Merlin did not. Perhaps Arthur really would change. Or perhaps, thought Merlin, she hadn’t had much of a choice. She was only a servant. If Arthur had had his eye on her…

 

He cut off that thought, because although Arthur was insufferably arrogant, he didn’t think that the man was like that. But it didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t see Gwen - sweet, helpful Gwen, who had called him strange and knew all about armour – as the Guinevere who stood beside Arthur as he ruled over his kingdom. There was something very different about this Camelot and the people living within it, when compared to the Camelot Merlin had read about and the Camelot he’d imagined. It wasn’t just that there were slight inconsistencies, but rather that he could not see how these people, how Arthur and Guinevere and Morgana, could become the people that he’d read them to be. Something was very wrong with this story, he realised as he walked back up to Gaius’ chambers, and he didn’t know whether he’d stay in this world long enough to see it righted.

 

***

 

The following week passed in a blur of armour, wet floors and dirty linen. Merlin felt like he was constantly covered in some sort of dirt, which wasn’t helped by the fact that Gaius seemed to think that bathing once a week would be adequate. On more than one occasion, Merlin found himself heading out before dawn to the stream outside Camelot’s walls, just so he could heat the water with his magic and scrub off all of the dirt on his elbows and his legs. It would have been easier to keep clean, he supposed, if he hadn’t ended up on his hands and knees so often. Merlin would almost have thought that Arthur _wanted_ to see his servant bent over in front of him, if it wasn’t for the fact that the prince always left the room very quickly when he saw that Merlin was scrubbing the floors.

 

Merlin came across Gwen in one of his early morning trips down to the stream outside of Camelot. She was near the edge of the castle wall, standing on the grass, her hair dark around her face and the hem of her dress soaked with dew. She held a bunch of flowers in her hands, and was bending to collect a second handful when Merlin came walking up to the gate.

 

“They’re for Morgana,” she said, noticing his curious look. “She likes having some in her room when she wakes.” Merlin nodded, looking into her face as she moved towards him. The pre-dawn light cast odd shadows on her skin, and he realised that she looked exhausted, as though she had been awake more often than she’d been asleep for the past few nights. Merlin knew the feeling well, but it was different for him. He hadn’t been born a servant, and although he did what Arthur asked, he would not allow the man to treat him like one. Merlin was from a time when everyone was equal, more or less, and he’d seen enough bullying during his childhood to know how to stand up against it. He may have been Arthur’s manservant, but he would not allow himself to become the prince’s slave. If there was one thing he knew, it was that whatever his position was here, it was a temporary thing, and that soon he’d be able to get back to his own life, where he got paid for his work and the only prince he’d see would be waving happily at him from a television screen. There was more to Merlin’s life than serving the prince, even if it didn’t feel like it sometimes. His job didn’t define him.

 

But Gwen, he knew, was different to him. She’d lived in Camelot all her life and she’d been a servant for that entire time. She was always working when Merlin saw her, even on those occasions when he wasn’t, when he’d put aside Arthur’s armour and gone to sit outside in the sun for a while, his back against the warm stone of the castle and his eyes closed against the bright sunlight. He had watched her working during those moments, wondering whether she was happy as Morgana’s servant. Merlin knew that one day she would be something more, if this world turned out like it was supposed to, but Gwen couldn’t know that. He wondered if she ever had fun, or what she’d wanted to be when she was a child. Had she seen another life for herself than the one she was living? Merlin had, but he was lucky. His magic had allowed him to come as close to it as he was ever going to get.

 

“Gwen,” he started hesitantly as they walked back towards the castle together, “do you like being Morgana’s servant?” Gwen looked sharply over at him.

“Yes,” she said. “Morgana’s lovely.”

“But wouldn’t you rather be something else?” Merlin took a flower from her and turned it over in his hands. “Like a princess, or something?” Gwen blinked at him and then laughed, the sound light in the early morning air.

“I don’t think it matters,” she said. “It’s not likely to happen, unless you’re secretly a prince.” She blushed. “Not that – not that I’m going to marry you, of course.”

“I’m not exactly the marrying type,” Merlin said wryly. Perhaps one day, back home, he’d find someone who he could settle down with, but he’d always imagined himself with – well, with someone like King Arthur, and men like that didn’t come along every day. He’d mentioned that to Will once, but Will hadn’t been all that sympathetic.

 

“You’ve got two choices,” he had said. “Pay some bloke who looks like your prince –“

 

“King,” Merlin had corrected.

 

“King, prince, queen, they’re all the same to me,” he’d replied. “So you pay the man to live with you and do whatever royal things you’d expect a prince to do to you, or you lower your standards and get an ordinary fellow.”

 

“Why do I have to pay the king?” Merlin asked.  

 

“Look,” Will had said seriously, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t walk around ignoring every girl because I want to fuck Angelina Jolie, do I?” He shook his head. “I don’t, because I’m not going to get Angelina Jolie while Brad Pitt’s around, and that would be unfair to all the other girls who aren’t Angelina.”

 

Merlin snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure all those other girls would really resent you for _not_ trying to sleep with them.”

 

“Exactly. So I let other women have a go, and if Angelina comes along and wants to get a piece of this, then at least I’d be experienced.”

 

“That’s disgusting, Will.”

 

But Will had simply shrugged.

 

“You’ll change your mind soon enough,” he had said. “Your prince fellow won’t be worth waiting around for.”

 

He wasn’t all that wrong about that, Merlin thought, kicking a boot against a tuft of grass. He looked up to see Gwen staring at him, and he realised that he’d completely forgotten what they’d been talking about.

 

“Sorry, what?” he said.

 

“I said, of course you’re the marrying type,” Gwen replied, smiling at him. “You’re really nice, and sort of… endearing,” she paused. “Plenty of girls would love to have you.”

 

“I wouldn’t love to have girls,” Merlin replied, almost automatically, because Will had pointed out women to him so many times that he’d developed a habit of reminding the man that yes, he was gay, and no, there were no breasts in the world, no matter how magnificent, that would change his mind. But Gwen wasn’t Will, and he clapped a hand over his mouth as soon as he’d said it, because he hadn’t been meaning to mention that to anyone here. For all he knew it could get him executed.

 

“Uh, could you forget I said that?” he asked, wincing, but Gwen simply shook her head.

“It’s alright,” she said with a small smile. “I won’t tell.” She hooked her arm through his as they walked up towards the castle, and Merlin felt, in that moment, that she was going to be a wonderful queen someday.

 

***

 

And then, in his fourth week as Arthur’s manservant, when Merlin was still spending every spare second of his time checking whether Gaius had found the spell, he’d saved Arthur’s life again. Only this time it wasn’t by accident. It wasn’t his magic acting out of turn, but rather it was a conscious decision, because as soon as Merlin had seen Arthur facing off against the enemy knight, he had known that he couldn’t let Arthur die simply because he was irritated by him. The knight was using magic and Merlin knew better than anyone that you couldn’t fight magic with anything but magic. Arthur might have been the best swordsman in the whole country, but he wouldn’t stand a chance if Merlin didn’t help. So he’d used his powers to save the prince and had watched as Arthur won, as he overcame the knight and slid his sword deep into the man’s chest.

 

That had been the first time he’d seen Arthur kill someone. After it had happened, Merlin had gone back to his room, crawled beneath his sheets, and cried until it felt as though he was going to shake himself apart. He wasn’t used to death. It had lingered around the edges of his life in Ealdor, but it had been distant enough that he didn’t have to acknowledge that it was there. It had shadowed his past, and he’d felt it when he’d visited his father in the tiny plot of ground at the cemetery. But here it was everywhere. Gaius was constantly fighting it, and every time Uther mentioned sorcery Merlin could feel it hanging over his head, reminding him that the very nature of his being, his magic, would get him killed if he were to reveal it. He knew that Arthur had probably killed sorcerers before this one, and he would kill many more before he became king.

 

And Merlin didn’t understand, because Arthur was a man who was backwards in every way that counted in Merlin’s time. He was young, Merlin’s age, and yet he had killed men, he had fought and injured men and had been struck and injured in turn. He had seen people die, and he had shown more bravery through it all than Merlin had ever believed that it was possible to possess.  Arthur had almost died in the tournament, but he hadn’t shown any fear. Arthur had _known_ that he was going to die when he’d walked out to face Valiant, and yet Merlin was the one huddled beneath his blankets while Arthur remained calm throughout it all. Even though the man could act like a complete ass, and even though he wasn’t yet a king, Arthur Pendragon was still more kingly than any man that Merlin had ever met.

 

It was at the moment when he’d seen Arthur acknowledging the crowd at the end of the fight, with his face drawn and weary and Valiant’s body at his feet, that Merlin had realised that perhaps the prince had a side to him that Merlin hadn’t seen, a side that he kept hidden beneath his arrogance and his pride. It was a glimpse of the king he could be, and even though it was only a tiny fragment, Merlin still felt hopeful. Perhaps Arthur would find the person who could nurture that fragment and help it to grow. Perhaps he could be a little like the king Merlin had read about after all.

 

But for the most part, Arthur kept that side of himself remarkably well hidden, so much so that Merlin was often left wondering whether he hadn’t simply imagined it. They’d established a routine over the first few weeks of Merlin’s life in Camelot, where Merlin woke up early, fetched Arthur’s breakfast from the kitchens, woke the prince up, got him into his armour, and spent the rest of the day cleaning up the man’s chambers until he came back from training or patrolling or whatever it was that he spent his days doing and Merlin would have to help him out of it again. Merlin had never worked so hard in his life.

 

“Slave labour is sort of illegal, you know,” he muttered one afternoon, when Arthur had had three training sessions instead of his usual one and had wanted to remove his armour between each. Arthur looked over from where he’d been staring out the window and frowned at him.

“No it isn’t, _Mer_ lin,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know where you get these ideas.”

“Not from anyone you’d know of,” Merlin replied, and Arthur made him spend the evening dusting the top of Arthur’s cupboards as punishment for his insolence.

 

It was difficult, Merlin thought as he looked over at where the prince was sitting at the table and finishing off his supper, his blonde hair gleaming in the candlelight. Half the time Arthur didn’t understand what he was saying, and the other half of the time he understood all too well and ended up angry at Merlin. Merlin had mentioned Doctor Who in his first week as Arthur’s manservant and Arthur had stared at him like he was speaking Russian, but he’d understood perfectly well what Merlin meant two minutes later when Merlin had called him a prick. It was as though they were on wavelengths that brushed against each other once in a blue moon and the rest of the time they were bouncing round in the dark, hoping to find some common ground.

 

Arthur looked over at him, eyes glinting in the firelight, and Merlin realised that he’d been staring. He ducked his head quickly, peering down at the duster in his hands. It seemed to be made of actual feathers, rather than the bright pink synthetic ones he always used at home. He smiled, remembering how, as a child, he’d always ended up wearing it on his head rather than using it for dusting. It was a very attractive headpiece, something that had left Merlin looking like a cross between Cleopatra and a flamingo. His mother had always taken photographs of him whenever he’d bounded out into the kitchen with it on. Those same photographs were still stacked under his bed in his old room in Ealdor, where he’d hidden them after the last Christmas lunch. Hunith had loved pulling them out and showing them to Merlin’s extended family, no matter how often Merlin complained about it.

 

“What is it?” he heard Arthur ask and Merlin looked back up to see the prince frowning at him.

“Nothing,” he replied, running his finger over one of the feathers. Arthur’s eyes narrowed even further.

  
“You were smiling,” he said, making it sound as though that sort of thing wasn’t allowed. “What is it?”

Merlin sighed. “Memories,” he said. “I used to dress up with one of these when I was younger.” He held the feather duster up near his head, then dropped it down again as he remembered that it was _Arthur_ he was talking to. He didn’t need to know all about Merlin’s less than manly dress-up moments.

 

“You what?” Arthur stared at him for a second, like he didn’t quite know how to respond to that, but then, unexpectedly, he started to laugh. Merlin froze. He hadn’t heard the prince laugh before – he hadn’t known that Arthur _could_ laugh. He didn’t seem like the sort of man who had time for humour. But now he was laughing, slumped sideways in the chair, his head thrown back, and it wasn’t a proper, delicate sort of a thing, but a full, deep belly laugh that echoed around the room. His throat was exposed, a long line of golden skin that caught the candlelight, with slight shadows around his collarbones and at the place where it met his jaw. Merlin blinked, mentally shaking himself. It was his _neck_ , for goodness’ sakes, not his chest or his arms or – Merlin swallowed - his cock. There was no need to get so fixated on it.

 

Arthur’s laughter slowed as he realised Merlin wasn’t sharing it, but was instead staring at him like he was wearing fairy wings and dancing naked on top of the table - which Merlin wouldn’t object to, exactly. Christ. He needed to focus.

“Shut up,” he said, because this was Arthur’s fault. The man didn’t need to laugh at him. Arthur stopped laughing, his face sliding into a scowl.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” he said crossly. “I’m the prince.” He glared imperiously at Merlin and then proceeded to list several hundred chores that he expected to be finished by the morning.

“Seriously, sire?” Merlin stared at him incredulously. The ass _knew_ that he couldn’t finish all that in one night.

Arthur walked over to his bed and flopped down across it. “ _Seriously,_ Merlin. And muck out the stables.” He stretched out, pulling the sheets up over his shoulders, and shot Merlin an imperious look as if to say _why are you still standing there?_ Merlin scowled, blowing out the candles and collecting the last of the dirty plates from Arthur’s supper.

 

“Even an entire factory full of machines couldn’t get that much work done,” he told Gaius later on, after he’d left Arthur’s chambers and returned the plates to the kitchen. “Hasn’t anyone thought of workers’ rights yet?” Gaius just raised an eyebrow at him. Merlin sighed, flicking his hand at the floor and using his magic to wipe the last of the mud off Arthur’s boots. He didn’t know why he bothered.

 

“You ought to be grateful, Merlin,” the old man said as he put the book he’d been scanning through back onto the shelf. “A lot of people would love to be manservant to the prince.” Merlin snorted. A lot of people would love to be the prince, maybe, or the prince’s consort, or his wife, but manservant to the prince? It’d be a desperate man indeed who willingly took up that position.

 

***

 

He managed to get all of the chores done with the help of his magic, and even though he could barely stand the next day, it was still satisfying to see Arthur do a double take when he saw all of his armour polished and cleaned. 

 

“Is that satisfactory, sire?” he asked, holding out the prince’s sword for him to take. Arthur narrowed his eyes, taking it and turning it over in his hands to make sure that it was properly polished.

“You had help, then,” he said after a moment, laying the sword down and stepping closer to Merlin. Merlin shook his head.

“I’m capable of cleaning things by myself,” he said, and Arthur raised an eyebrow at him.

“ _Are_ you, Merlin?” he said in mock surprise. Merlin frowned, resisting the urge to thump him across the shoulder. He knew that Arthur was the prince of Camelot, but really, the man deserved a slap.

“Will that be all?” he asked instead, because if he was stuck in the same room as the prince for much longer he _would_ end up hitting him. There was only so much taunting that Merlin could take, especially when it was Arthur Pendragon doing the taunting. It still stung a little more than it ought to, whenever he heard the prince mocking him, because every time Arthur did so he was taking himself a step further away from how Merlin had imagined him to be. It was silly, Merlin knew, and he should have ditched his image of King Arthur as soon as he’d been thrown in the dungeons that first night, but he somehow couldn’t bring himself to discard it. It was a part of him, the ideal behind every boy he’d ever liked and every man he’d ever kissed, and it was too big to cut loose. He could still remember the daydreams he’d had of himself and the king, and if he gave up on King Arthur he’d be giving up on that perfect, flawless version of himself as well.

Merlin looked up to see that Arthur was staring at him and he shook himself, pulling his mind back to the present situation.

  
“What?” he asked.

“ _I said,_ prepare the horses,” Arthur said slowly. “We’re going hunting.”

 

 ***

 

Merlin had never killed an animal before. He’d barely even seen any non-domestic ones outside of the zoo, and his experience of wild animals was basically limited to hearing them rustling about ominously in the bushes when he’d gone camping with Will when they were fourteen. He’d climbed into Will’s tent and refused to leave for the rest of the night, even though a brief look through the trees in the morning suggested that the fearsome beasts had actually just been rowdy teenagers looking for something to tag with spray paint.

 

But the point was that when Arthur had handed him a spear and told him to throw it at any animals he saw, Merlin had promptly dropped it – almost on Arthur’s foot - and shaken his head. He wasn’t going to be any part of Arthur’s hunting trip. There were nicer ways to kill things, firstly, and besides, Merlin had seen documentaries on hunting. You had to cut up the thing afterwards, and he had no illusions about who Arthur would pick to carry the meat all the way back to Camelot. He couldn’t do that. Things would get _messy._

 

“You’re coming, idiot,” Arthur had said, shoving the spear back into Merlin’s hand. “And if you drop that again you’ll spend the week in the stocks.”

 

And so that was how Merlin came to be standing in the middle of the forest beside an intently-focused Arthur, hoping that any animals they came across would be sensible enough to run away before the prince could aim at them. They’d left Camelot two hours ago, from what Merlin could glimpse of the watch hidden beneath his sleeve, and he’d already sent out at least three pulses of magic to send a couple of deer fleeing before Arthur could pick up their tracks. He was using a hearing spell, one he’d stumbled across when he was seven and had wanted to hear what his mother was talking about on the phone in her bedroom.  It hadn’t been all that interesting – something about tax returns – but Merlin had kept the knowledge of how exactly he needed to shape his magic in order to do that spell and he’d used it on many occasions since then.

 

“Merlin,” Arthur whispered. Merlin clapped his hands to his ears, because he still hadn’t figured out the finer points of the magic yet. It made noises that were far away sound louder, but also amplified noises that were close by. Arthur stared at him and Merlin pulled his hands tentatively away from his ears.

 

“I thought I –“ he started to explain, then stopped as he heard a noise off to his right. It was almost like voices, only Merlin knew that there weren’t any patrols out at this time of day. Besides, there weren’t any roads near here for the townsfolk to travel along.

“Merlin, what – “ Arthur started, but Merlin held up a hand to stop him from speaking and, for once, the prince did as he wanted. Merlin listened harder, closing his eyes, trying to hear past the sounds of the forest. _Kill them_ , he heard, and that was enough.

“Bandits,” he hissed, and Arthur pulled out his sword, just as the first of the men emerged from the trees.

There were four of them, heavy, fierce men with swords held firmly in their outstretched hands. They charged at the prince, their faces wild, but Arthur stood his ground and engaged the first two before Merlin could even think about picking up his spear. The other two ran at Merlin, even though he didn’t think he looked that much of a threat, standing there open-mouthed with his spear lying on the ground  two feet away. He didn’t know what to do; he hadn’t fought anyone like this before, but his magic punched its way out through his chest before he even remembered that it was there, and then half a tree fell on one of the men while the other crumpled to the ground with his face twisted up, Merlin’s spear protruding from his chest. He blinked, dazed, and looked over to see that Arthur was standing between the bodies of the other two bandits, his face dark and blood dripping from a gash in his lower arm. Merlin ran over to him, the sick feeling swirling in his chest again – a mix of worry and anger that they’d been attacked and uncertainty that he’d had to interfere again. He was sure that there were only so many times he could do it without derailing Arthur’s future completely.

 

He pulled up Arthur’s sleeve, trying to see how bad the wound was. Arthur tried to pull himself free, but Merlin held tight to the man’s arm.

“Let me see,” he said. “I’m good with injuries.” It was partly true – he’d only done a first aid course, but that probably meant that he was better than most of the people back at the castle. Arthur made a derisive noise but didn’t try to pull away again. Merlin pushed at the fabric until it was bunched around Arthur’s upper arm. The wound was long, but not as deep as Merlin had feared, and it didn’t look like it would need stitches. He wondered whether Gaius would be able to heal it, and realised that he had no idea what sorts of medicines the physician used.

 

He reached into his pack and pulled out a handkerchief, one of the ones that he’d deliberately left at home because they had Winnie the Pooh embroidered all over them, but his mother must have put into his bag at the last minute. He tied it as tightly as he could around the wound and then stepped back, allowing Arthur to examine his handiwork. The prince stared from Merlin to the bear and back again, utterly perplexed.

 

“It’s a bear,” Merlin said.

“I can see that. Why -”

“It’s better than nothing, isn’t it?” Merlin interrupted, and Arthur held his gaze for several seconds before sighing and pulling the sleeve of his tunic back down. Merlin picked up their bags and swung them onto his back, looking away as Arthur walked over to his spear and pulled it out of the bandit. The prince looked at it for several seconds, frowning, and then peered over at Merlin. He didn’t say anything, though, and Merlin was grateful.

“How’d you know the bandits were there?” he asked as they made their way back towards Camelot.

 

Merlin shrugged. “I heard them.” Arthur raised an eyebrow. “I have good hearing,” Merlin continued hastily. “It’s the ears.” he reached up a finger to touch the shell of one. Arthur tracked the movement with his gaze.  

“They’re - “ Arthur started to say, staring at them, and then paused. “They’re useful,” he said, and walked off through the trees, leaving Merlin confused. He had the distinct feeling that that wasn’t what Arthur had been wanting to say at all.

 

***

 

As the days went by, Merlin found that he was finally getting used to the routine that he’d fallen into within Camelot – he would save Arthur’s life every other week, do chores for Gaius, or for Arthur, whenever they thought that he had any sort of free time, and keep out of trouble as much as possible – so really, it wasn’t all that surprising when Lancelot turned up and threw Merlin’s life off balance again.

 

Merlin met him in the forest, and his first impressions of the man came in flashes – a streak of dark hair and olive-coloured skin darting past him, a strong, muscled arm wielding a sword, a voice that sounded deep and tinged with something foreign calling for him to run, run _now_.

 

It was only when they skidded to a stop, breathless, with their hearts thudding hard with adrenaline, that Merlin looked up and saw Lancelot in full.

 

He was noble-looking, but not like Uther’s knights, who stared out over the world as if it was theirs to take. He had a kinder face than that, with deep brown eyes and a smile that spread quick and warm across his face. Merlin liked him immediately.

 

“I’m Merlin,” he said, smiling.

 

“Lancelot,” the man replied with a grin, and Merlin probably should have expected as much, because he was young and strong and beautiful, so of course he’d be a part of the legend. It seemed as though everyone who was young and strong and beautiful around here, was.

 

Lancelot fit easily into life at court, making friends with Leon and the other knights and managing to impress Arthur, despite the fact that he wasn’t a noble. Merlin even caught him standing alone with Gwen in the passageway one morning, but he backed quickly out of sight before they noticed him. It had caught him by surprise, because in the legend it seemed as though the relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere had sprung up after Arthur was king, during the days he spent riding over his newly-formed country and protecting its people. Merlin hadn’t even known that they were supposed to meet yet. He hadn’t thought that seeing them standing close together in the castle halls, smiles on their faces, would seem so _right,_ as though it was Lancelot and Gwen who were supposed to be together and Arthur had simply pushed in between them for a while.

 

But that was the thing about Lancelot – he seemed perfect here, as though he’d been born to walk the halls of Camelot and to defend its borders. Merlin found that he wanted Lancelot to have what he’d come for – to have the chance to serve Camelot as best he could. Merlin could see how his eyes lit up whenever he described it and the look he got on his face, when he was describing what it was to be a knight, was one that Merlin knew only too well.

 

And besides, it didn’t seem that much like deception, telling Arthur and the king that Lancelot was a nobleman, because Merlin knew that he would be one in the end. It wasn’t really a lie, he thought, because Lancelot was good enough, brave enough and strong enough to be a knight. Lancelot was _meant_ to be a knight. It was his destiny.

 

But all the same, he felt a sickening surge of guilt when Lancelot was found out, because – lie or not – it had been _his_ idea to fake the man’s title. He had persuaded Lancelot to try.

 

Lancelot was gone again, almost before Merlin realised it. He hadn’t stayed for long, really – a brief flash of time when Merlin had somebody other than Gaius who he could talk to, somebody who he could whisper to at night when Gaius was snoring loudly in the next room and someone who he could laugh with when they were watching the nobles flocking around Uther in the hall. Lancelot had seemed so _right_ for this world that Merlin was sure that he would stay.

 

Gwen seemed quieter after the man had left and for the next few days they would both fall silent whenever one of them mentioned Lancelot. Merlin had thought that the sudden, first-sight sort of love that all the romance novels talked about would be something wonderful, but every time he saw Gwen paused, halfway through folding Morgana’s dresses, a sad little frown on her face, Merlin thought that perhaps it was the worst thing in the world. 

 

***

 

The weeks passed quickly after Lancelot left. Merlin saved Arthur’s life on a dozen more occasions, his stomach clenching each time at how close the prince had come to death and how _wrong_ it was that he had interfered. That was the last, he would promise himself each time it happened.  That would be the last thing he would do for Arthur, and he would find a way home before the prince got into danger again. But by the time the leaves had all dropped from the trees and the sky had faded to a wintery grey, Gaius still hadn’t found the spell. It was probably in one of the older books of magic, he said, and it was difficult because those ones weren’t ordered at all. It was just as likely to be in the first book he looked in or the last.

 

So Merlin simply gritted his teeth and carried on, because when it came down to it he’d rather stay in Camelot, where he could see everything unfolding, than hide out in the woods for months until Gaius found a way to get him home. He made sure that he didn’t interfere in any other way than saving Arthur’s life, and that couldn’t hurt anything that much, surely. Arthur was supposed to survive to be king, because that was when the story started, and why would it matter whether the _reasons_ for his survival changed? Merlin couldn’t have let him die. The prince wasn’t a bad person, and a small part of Merlin still held on to the hope that he could still turn out like Merlin had imagined him, if he only survived for long enough.

 

Merlin was also slowly getting used to his duties as a manservant, though there were times when he simply didn’t understand what he was being asked to do. Like now, for instance.

 

“You want me to _what?_ ” Merlin stared at Arthur, wondering whether he’d heard the man correctly.

 

Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose, inhaling deeply. “Help me to bathe, Merlin, there’s a feast tonight. I trust that you know what a bath is?” Merlin nodded. He hadn’t had one for months, since washing in Camelot basically involved a lot of frantic scrubbing in icy streams, and back in Ealdor he’d mainly had showers. He liked showers. They were warm and comforting, and you could scrub all of the dirt away, watch it flow down the drain and step out all clean and steaming and fresh.

“Can’t you bath yourself?” he asked, even though Arthur seemed incapable of doing anything on his own unless it involved a horse or a sword. Or wrestling.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Arthur said, confirming Merlin’s thoughts. Merlin sighed. He needed to get back home, he thought, walking out of the man’s chambers to fetch the water.

 

It wasn’t until he’d reached the well in the town – and it was at moments like these that he _really_ missed plumbing – that he realised that he was going to be _bathing the prince_ , and that would probably involve a whole lot of naked Arthur. Merlin swallowed, pausing from where he’d been pumping the water into the bucket. He’d managed to avoid seeing Arthur completely unclothed so far, which was both a relief, because he hadn’t had sex in months and he didn’t know how much nakedness he could take, especially when it was someone as fit as Arthur, but also irritating, because he hadn’t had sex in months and he’d had weeks of staring at Arthur’s chest and his arms and his neck as he took the man’s armour on and off, and he wanted _more_ , dammit. He knew that Arthur was supposed to marry Gwen, and that as a result he was almost certainly as straight as Will, but Merlin could still look, couldn’t he?

 

Only now, with the image of Arthur all golden and pink and wet with bathwater floating through his mind, Merlin was beginning to change his mind. He usually needed alcohol in his system before he got anywhere with guys, which Will said was because he was a prude and Merlin thought was because he could never work out if the men were interested or not.  Arthur, he knew, most certainly wasn’t, and so Merlin really didn’t want the man to notice Merlin’s interest. He had a big enough ego as it was.

 

What he really needed to do was to take the edge off, he thought as he filled up the bucket with water. He wasn’t interested in _Arthur_ so much as fit naked men in general, and he had plenty of them on his laptop. He hadn’t used the computer in weeks, now, because he wasn’t sure how long he’d be here and he hadn’t wanted to waste the battery. This wouldn’t be wasting the battery, exactly, he reasoned. It was simply a way to make sure that he didn’t draw any more attention to himself than necessary.

 

Merlin climbed the stairs leading up from the courtyard, wondering whether he could risk going back to Gaius’ chambers for a few moments before taking the water to Arthur’s. He’d just say he was heating up the water when Arthur asked why he’d taken so long. Heating up bathwater took a while, right?

 

Merlin sighed as he held the bucket of water up to his chest and pushed open the door. He shouldn’t have to do this. He should be back in Ealdor, where there were clubs he could go to and strangers that he could dance with, until they were both hot and eager and ready. There weren’t any such things here, even though Merlin had scoured the lower town for them in the first few weeks. He hadn’t expected to find any, really, but he’d wanted to find something that he could recognise, some place where he’d know what to do as soon as he walked in and he could forget about his magic and Arthur and this whole town just for a moment. But there weren’t any - the closest thing he could find was a tavern. He’d left it almost as soon as he’d entered, because rowdy barmaids flirting with middle-aged, balding men weren’t really what he had in mind.

 

He didn’t really know what he had in mind, though. The clubs had never been all that satisfying, and Merlin had always come out of them feeling drunk and filthy. It had been Will who had urged him to go to them, to wander with him round the streets until they found a place that spewed heavy pumping music and had dance floors so dark you couldn’t see who you were dancing with. It wasn’t the life he’d wanted to live then, but now he found that he was missing it.

 

Merlin set down the bucket in the corner of his room and walked over to where his laptop was hidden under the floorboards near his bed. He pulled it out, brushing the dust off its cover and turning it on. He settled down on the bed with it, the sunlight that was streaming through the open window brushing warm against his skin. Lying back against the pillows, he inhaled deeply. The air smelled like summer. The past few days had been hot and Merlin had found found himself rolling up his sleeves and the legs of his breeches at every spare moment he had, just to feel the heat against his skin. Arthur had walked in that morning when he’d been sitting on the floor of the prince’s chambers with his trousers pushed up to his knees. He had  stared at Merlin with an odd expression on his face until Merlin had rolled them back down and gone back to scrubbing the floor.

 

Merlin closed his eyes, stretching his arms out behind his head as he waited for the laptop to hum its way into life. He could hear the sounds of the market through the window, the low rumble of animals and people and life that sounded almost familiar – like the sound you heard when you walked into central station at Ealdor. It was a noise that he wanted to keep with him, because there were so few that he could recognise here.

 

He wondered what would happen when Gaius found the right spell. Would Arthur notice if he left? Would Merlin tell him that he was leaving, or would he slip away quietly before Arthur could try and stop him? He didn’t know if manservants were allowed to quit. Perhaps Arthur would have to find someone to replace him. Perhaps Gwen would replace him and Merlin’s departure would form the bond through which they would grow to love each other and from there, to rule beside each other as King and Queen. He tried to imagine it. Gwen would be in purple, with her hair threaded through with ribbons and a solid golden crown upon her head. She would be beautiful, a queen loved by her people because she understood them even better than Arthur. She would teach Arthur how to treat his people – he loved them, Merlin knew, but he was still too separate from them to know how to go about ruling them. Arthur’s rule would be different to Uther Pendragon’s and it would be a servant girl who would make those changes. He couldn’t envy Gwen for that, because she was sweet and lovely and of all the people that Merlin knew, it was her who most deserved to become something more than she was.

 

But he couldn’t shake the image of Arthur smiling at her, golden crown glinting in the sunlight, with that look in his eyes, the one that Merlin had seen, sometimes, when Arthur was staring out over the courtyard in the afternoons. There was love in that look, and peacefulness, and even though Gwen deserved it, he couldn’t help feeling a surge of disappointment when he imagined the scene.

 

So he tried to put it from his mind, instead focusing on the scent of herbs from Gaius’ room and the press of the mattress against his shoulders, the bunched up sheets pushing into the small of his back, the edges of his boots hanging off the end of the bed. He was tired; he could feel the warmth of the sun washing over him, soothing him, making him forget what it was that he’d been meaning to do. There was something important, he knew, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was, and it didn’t seem all that important anymore anyway, because –

 

“ _Mer_ lin!”

 

Merlin opened his eyes to see Arthur’s face hovering close above his, a scowl pressed across his face. He blinked, looking around. The light in the room was dimmer than before, and his arm was numb beneath his head. Crap. He’d fallen asleep.

 

“I was just…” he tried to think of an excuse. “Heating up the water for your bath, Sire,” he said, sitting up abruptly and almost hitting his face against Arthur’s. Arthur stepped quickly backwards and dragged his gaze over Merlin’s messy hair and crumpled clothes.

 

“For _two hours_?” he asked incredulously. Merlin winced. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but there had been sun and warmth and he’d been so _tired_. He rubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to focus, and then froze as he saw his laptop lying opened on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t glowing, which meant that it was probably out of power. Arthur didn’t seem to have noticed it, but Merlin pulled the sheet up towards his chest anyway, trying to cover it from view. Arthur looked at him oddly for a second, but the bucket in the corner of the room caught his eye before he could ask what Merlin was doing.

 

“Merlin,” he said, walking over to it and peering inside. “Heating up the bathwater, are you?” Merlin bit his lip, and Arthur shook his head, exasperated.

 

“Be at my chambers in five minutes,” he said. “ _With_ the bathwater.” And with that he left the room.

 

***

 

Merlin walked through the door into Arthur’s room, trying to avoid splashing hot water from the overflowing bucket over himself. The prince was sitting on his bed and staring out the window. Merlin walked over to where he’d set the bath down earlier and poured the water into it, heaving a relieved sigh as he stretched out his aching arms. It had taken seven trips down to the well to get enough water to fill the tub, and Merlin had heated each bucketful with magic before he’d entered Arthur’s chambers.

 

He sidled towards the door, hoping that Arthur would just let him leave. But the prince stood up from the bed and frowned at him, holding out his arms so that Merlin could undress him. Merlin stepped back into the room and mentally cursed the prince, and Uther, and royalty in general for not taking the time to learn how to take their own armour and their own clothes off. It was pathetic, really.

 

Arthur stared impassively forward as Merlin began to undress him. Merlin had done it on several occasions now, but the sight of the prince’s skin slowly appearing as he removed each piece of clothing was something he hadn’t yet gotten used to. It was different to how he’d undressed other men – with them, it had always been about getting bare skin against each other as fast as possible, so they’d been rough and careless as they stripped.

 

This was slower, partly because Merlin really didn’t want Arthur naked in front of him right now, but also because he enjoyed the simple act of undressing Arthur. He liked the way the prince looked straight ahead, as though he was trying not to notice that his armour and his clothes were disappearing. He liked the way Arthur’s head jerked with annoyance if Merlin accidentally brushed his cold fingers over exposed skin, or the way Arthur swallowed if Merlin leaned in too close. But most of all, he liked Arthur’s body itself – the way the sun caught his hair and made it gleam, the pale gold of his chest, the way his breeches looked when he didn’t have a shirt hanging loose over them. There were scars on Arthur’s skin, pale lines that Merlin wanted to run his fingers over. Arthur was an ass, sure, but his body was _beautiful._ It didn’t have that soft, polished edge that Merlin always saw with the men in magazines; that look that had never seemed quite real. Arthur’s body looked as though it had been used and as though he knew how to use it. It was the body of a fighter and the body of a prince, and Merlin hadn’t wanted anything so badly in his life.

 

He pulled off Arthur’s belt and laid it on the table before turning back to Arthur. He bumped his hand against the prince’s arms to get him to lift them up. Arthur scowled at that, but Merlin ignored him, because if the man was going to act like a child who needed to be undressed, then Merlin was certainly going to treat him like one.

 

Merlin stepped closer and pulled at the hem of Arthur’s shirt, lifting it up until he could see the golden skin of Arthur’s waist. He pulled it over Arthur’s head, tugging it off and throwing it aside, trying to keep himself from staring too intently at the prince’s body. He focused instead on the soft bumps of Arthur’s collarbones and the long line of his neck – safe places to look, Merlin thought. But despite that, Merlin could feel heat sparking through his veins and he had never gotten turned on by a _neck_ before; what was wrong with him?  

 

Arthur had noticed his hesitation now and was frowning at him, his red lips parted, and Merlin could tell that he was about to make some scathing remark and he really didn’t need that right now. So he stepped quickly forward and reached for the laces of Arthur’s breeches, fumbling over them because his fingers were freezing and who put _laces_ on trousers anyway? There seemed to be far too many strings and not enough holes and Merlin could feel Arthur’s gaze boring into the top of his head, so it probably wasn’t all that surprising when Arthur made an exasperated sound and pushed Merlin’s hands aside.

 

Merlin moved backwards and looked at the ground, willing himself to keep his eyes firmly fixed on the stone floor until he heard the splash of water and Arthur’s contented sigh.

 

Then Merlin moved over to the side of the tub and let himself look at the prince, because the man was half submerged in the water anyway and Merlin didn’t think that too much could go wrong when all he could see of Arthur was his chest.

 

Only it soon became apparent that when Arthur had said Merlin would be bathing him, he _really_ meant bathinghim, because as soon as Merlin made his reluctant way over to somewhere near the edge of the bath the prince nodded at the soap, as though he was expecting Merlin to pick it up and use it.

 

Merlin blinked, looking from Arthur to the soap and back again, because Arthur was joking, right? He’d read a whole lot of books on the medieval world and not one of them mentioned men bathing each other. Merlin would have remembered something like that.

 

He picked up the soap and dragged a stool over so that he could sit behind Arthur, his knees hard against the side of the bath and his hands hovering above Arthur’s shoulders.

 

“In your own time, Merlin,” Arthur said shortly, without turning around, and Merlin felt a surge of irritation. It was Arthur’s fault. He ought to know how to bath himself, so that Merlin didn’t have to sit here watching water drops sliding from his hair and down his back. He pushed hard on Arthur’s shoulders and the prince slipped suddenly down the side of the bath until his head was beneath the water. He emerged a second later, spluttering wildly, and Merlin felt a tiny jab of satisfaction.

“ _Merlin!”_ Arthur said, twisting his body around to glare at him.

 

Merlin shrugged. “You need to be wet, sire,” he said, and then winced, because it sounded like he was quoting bad porno dialogue, and he really didn’t need to be thinking about porn, bad or otherwise, when Arthur was sitting naked before him.

 

Arthur pushed his dripping fringe out of his eyes and slid back around, a scowl still fixed upon his face. “Get on with it, then,” he said, and Merlin picked up the soap and started to lather it over Arthur’s back, his fingers brushing lightly over Arthur’s skin. The prince’s muscles were tight and hard, as though he hadn’t relaxed in months. Merlin frowned, dipping the tips of his fingers into the water and pressing them against Arthur’s shoulders, trying to work out the knots in his muscles. There was silence for a while, the only sound the splash of the water around Arthur’s waist and the soft chatter of the birds outside. Merlin had almost forgotten what he was doing when he heard Arthur give a contented groan and relax against the side of the bath, his shoulders pushed back against Merlin’s hands.

 

Merlin froze. Christ, _that sound_. It was like it had driven straight into his chest and set something on fire, because Merlin had thought he was doing a pretty good job of pretending he wasn’t massaging a naked Arthur Pendragon, until Arthur made that noise. As soon as he’d heard the moan, everything had suddenly come flooding back in, as though someone had shut off all his filters. He could feel the way the prince pressed back against him, every time Merlin skimmed his fingers over the man’s skin, and how he could almost see the shape of him beneath the rippling water, and the feel of his muscles beneath his fingers, hard and tight and smooth. It was too much for him; he’d never been this intimate with someone without it leading to sex. He could feel his stupid body realising that, the heat spreading through his belly until he was hard and straining against his breeches.  _Shit_. 

 

Merlin lifted his hands from Arthur’s back and tried to slow his breathing. He needed to get out of here, and soon.

“Hair,” Arthur said, swivelling around to look at Merlin, oblivious. He frowned at Merlin’s vacant expression.

 

“My hair. Wash it. Honestly, Merlin, it isn’t hard, even for someone like you.”

 

Merlin felt his breath catch as he heard Arthur’s voice, and it wasn’t fair. His cock was pressed uncomfortably hard against his breeches and he just wanted to leave. Why couldn’t Arthur wash his own stupid hair? The whole situation would have been almost funny if Merlin wasn’t so painfully hard. He took a deep breath and pressed his fingers into Arthur’s hair, trying not to notice the way the strands caught against his fingers and how soft it felt, all wet and soapy from the bathwater. Arthur shifted slightly and Merlin looked down to see that the prince had the soap in his hands, and was sliding it up the inside of his thighs. _Fuck._ Merlin whimpered softly, watching Arthur’s hands disappearing beneath the water, moving higher up his body to wash some place that Merlin couldn’t quite see. Arthur hummed in annoyance, pulling his head forward, and Merlin realised that he’d been twisting his fingers into the prince’s hair. He cupped some water in his hands and poured it over Arthur’s hair, then picked up a towel from beside the bath and handed it over to Arthur.

“Done,” he said, and shut his eyes as Arthur climbed out of the bath, so that he wouldn’t see the water running over his body, leaving smooth wet tracks across his skin.

 

“Merlin,” Arthur said, and Merlin opened his eyes to see that the prince was standing with his towel slung low over his hips, glaring imperiously at Merlin. “My clothes,” he snapped.

 

Merlin stood carefully to his feet and walked over to the cupboard, pulling out a tunic and breeches. He held them out for the prince, hoping that Arthur would put them on himself and that he wouldn’t look down at Merlin’s trousers, because the evidence of his arousal was probably far too clear.

 

Arthur looked at him with a curious expression, his hair dripping water down his face. One drop slid over the corner of his lip and he opened his mouth to it, almost unconsciously, and then lifted a thumb to his lips to wipe it away. Merlin gritted his teeth, hands balled at his sides and veins sparking with heat, and stared at his feet, willing himself to stay motionless.

 

“Is there something the matter, Merlin?” Arthur asked, his voice low.  An odd noise burst out of the back of Merlin’s throat, something between a squeak and a groan. Arthur stared at him, nonplussed, and Merlin flushed.

 

“Nothing, sire,” he managed. “Gaius needs me for –“ he waved a hand vaguely, hoping that Arthur would interpret the movement as something plausible that Gaius might need him to do, “- so could I go?”

 

Arthur stared at him for a moment longer, eyes narrowed, and then nodded. “Very well,” he said, and Merlin bolted for the door before he’d even finished.

 

Merlin walked fast through the castle with his head full of Arthur – of the prince lying half-submerged in the bath with water streaming off him, his head tipped back and the long, golden line of his throat exposed; of Arthur, stroking himself languorously towards the edge with his bottom lip caught between his teeth and his eyes fixed on Merlin’s. Merlin stuffed a hand to his mouth and bit down hard on one knuckle, trying to close his mind to the images.

 

He turned the corner too quickly, eyes downcast, and almost collided with one of the maidservants walking along the passageway. “Sorry,” he managed, his voice sounding off, and he could feel her puzzled gaze following him as he hurried onwards.

 

He had to – had to find something else to focus on, that was it. He would just go back to his room, lock the door and think very, _very_ hard about something other than Arthur. Merlin gave a tiny smile as he remembered that Will had been fiddling around on his computer in the days before he’d left. He had downloaded a whole folder of videos that Merlin hadn’t planned to look at, ones that Will had found on the very filthiest parts of the internet. Ones that seemed – from what little Merlin had seen of them when he’d opened the folder to see what Will had done – to consist of golden-haired men doing all sorts of wonderful things to each other.

 

Merlin nodded to himself as he rounded the corner into the passage where Gaius’ chambers were. He had ten percent of his battery left, and by god, he was going to watch porn.

 

***

 

He didn’t return to Arthur’s chambers after that, instead slipping into the feast late, when everyone had had too much wine to notice. He kept his eyes averted from Arthur’s table though, just in case. Gwen smiled at him when he walked through the door and he made his way over to stand beside her.

“Classy,” he said, nodding at one of the nobles, who had just fallen backwards off his chair while trying to explain a jousting technique to the man sitting beside him.

“They aren’t all as bad as him,” she said with a laugh, and Merlin looked around the rest of the room. She was right – most of the men were still upright, at least, though Arthur was slumped at such a precarious angle that Merlin had a feeling he’d be tipping off his seat at any moment. Merlin watched in amusement as the prince slid lower, then looked around with a surprised expression, like he couldn’t understand why his face was suddenly in line with the tabletop.

“Arthur’s gone,” he said to Gwen, and she looked over at the king’s table, puzzled.

“No he hasn’t,” she replied. “He’s still there.” Merlin shook his head.

“He’s sloshed.” Gwen blinked at him, and Merlin gave a half-exasperated laugh. “He’s _drunk_ ,” he explained. They both watched as the prince said something to Uther, who roared with laughter and waved his goblet enthusiastically in the air. Arthur wobbled in his seat, looking suddenly away from his father and fixing his gaze upon Merlin.

“Merlin!” he called, beckoning wildly. Merlin made a face at Gwen.

“Duty calls, my lady,” he said, bowing. She laughed, waving him away with her hand. Merlin grinned and started to make his way through the hall towards the prince, but he had only managed a couple of steps when one of the knights – Bedevere, he thought the name was – reached out and grabbed his arm. Merlin thought he saw Arthur’s eyes narrow across the room.

“Let go,” he said, trying to pull himself out of the man’s grip. Bedevere swayed, but kept his hand firmly around Merlin’s wrist.

“You’re pretty,” he said, his words slurred. Merlin blinked in surprise, pausing in his attempts to extricate himself from the knight’s grip. Bedevere leaned closer, his face inches from Merlin’s own. “Like to get your pretty mouth around – “ Merlin never did find out what exactly Bedevere wanted to put in Merlin’s mouth, however, because at that moment the knight was interrupted by Arthur’s fist sinking into the side of his face.

“Arthur, _no!”_ Merlin said, grabbing the prince by his tunic to stop him from leaping on top of Bedevere. “Whatthe _hell_ are you doing?”

“S’filthy,” Arthur said, tugging against Merlin’s grip and swaying dangerously. “Merlin doesn’t – you wouldn’t… hands off my servant,” he finished, waving his arm at Bedevere.

 

Merlin frowned. “Come on, you prat,” he said. “You’ve had enough wine tonight.” He hauled the prince’s arm over his shoulders and pulled him away from where Bedevere lay. He gave the knight an apologetic glance as he turned away, because it really wasn’t Bedevere’s fault that Arthur was so damn possessive, and then he stopped as he almost ran straight into Uther.

“What is the matter?” the king asked, looking from where Bedevere was getting unsteadily to his feet to Arthur, who was leaning heavily against Merlin and smiling to himself.

 

Merlin swallowed. “Arth- uh, the prince is drunk, sire,” he said quietly.

 

Uther stared at him for a moment, his gaze intense, and then barked out a laugh. “Carry on, then,” he said, motioning for Merlin to keep walking. He turned to talk to some of the other nobles and Merlin heaved a sigh of relief.

“Come on,” he said to Arthur, helping the man out of the hall and into the passageway.

 

As soon as they were out of the main hall Arthur seemed to decide that he’d had enough of walking, because he pushed himself away from Merlin, leant against the wall and slid down it till he was sitting at its base. “Siddown,” he said to Merlin, patting his hand clumsily against the stone next to him.

“Arthur, no,” Merlin said. “Get up, we’ve got to get you to bed.”  But Arthur simply pouted up at him, his lips shining red with wine, and stayed where he was. Merlin peered down at the prince. He didn’t think there’d be any way he could get him back upright again when he was in this state.

 

Merlin sighed.

 

“Stay here,” he said to Arthur. Arthur nodded, and Merlin made sure that the prince looked like he was going to stay put for the time being, then walked back towards the feast. It didn’t seem as though Arthur would be moving for a while and Merlin figured he may as well get started on rehydrating him as soon as possible, because he didn’t think that Arthur with a hangover would be particularly pleasant to deal with in the morning.

 

He entered the hall, picked his way through the knights and the nobles who were strewn about in various states of intoxication, then grabbed up a jug of water off the closest table and left again, walking quickly  back down the passageway to Arthur. The prince was in the same spot that Merlin had left him, but he had tipped over sideways and was now lying on his side with his back pressed against the wall. He grinned up at Merlin when Merlin bent down beside him.

 

“Sit up,” he ordered, setting the jug down a safe distance away before wrapping his arms around the prince and pulling him upright. Arthur didn’t complain, instead resting his head heavily against Merlin’s shoulder and relaxing in Merlin’s grip. Merlin could feel the prince’s body limp against his, like he had been struggling to holding himself together and had stopped trying the moment Merlin had touched him. The idea of that – of Merlin being able to control the prince like this, of the prince feeling so _secure_ in Merlin’s arms – shouldn’t have sent a flood of warmth through his veins, but it did. Merlin swallowed, moving quickly backwards as soon Arthur looked like he was going to stay upright on his own.

“Smell nice,” Arthur mumbled, frowning as he felt Merlin let go of his arms. Merlin blinked, surprised. Was that an actual _compliment?_ Arthur must have had more to drink than Merlin had thought.

“Here, drink this,” he said, starting to hand the jug over to the prince. He stopped when Arthur reached for it and missed by several feet, his hands closing on empty air and the familiar pout returning to his face as they did so. Merlin rolled his eyes and held the jug up to the prince’s lips himself.

“Your hand-eye coordination is terrible,” he commented. Arthur didn’t answer, instead opening his mouth and drinking the water Merlin tipped into it. Merlin watched the prince’s lips on the edge of the jug, and tried not to stare at the bob of Arthur’s throat as he swallowed. He pulled the jug back from Arthur’s lips when the prince had drunk a third of it and settled down beside the man, leaning his back against the wall. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of the feast echoing down the passageway.

“You didn’t have to punch Bedevere,” Merlin said eventually. He glanced sideways to see Arthur staring at him, his cheeks flushed with the wine and his eyes glassy.

“He was – wasn’t right,” Arthur mumbled. “Mine. You’re mine.” And with that he tilted sideways again, his face pressing against Merlin’s shoulder and his eyes drifting closed. Merlin sat there with Arthur’s body warm against his and Arthur’s words pulsing through his mind and his heart beating hard within his chest, because even though he knew that Arthur meant that Merlin was his servant, nothing more, it was still close – so close – to what he’d always wanted to hear Arthur Pendragon say to him. And even though this Arthur Pendragon wasn’t the king Merlin had dreamt of, he still found a small part of himself wishing that Arthur had meant those words anyway.

 

***

 

By the time he got Arthur back to his chambers it was almost two in the morning. Merlin was tired, he could feel sleep dragging at his limbs and sinking heavy through his veins. He wrestled Arthur’s limp form onto the bed, pulling off the prince’s boots and his jacket but leaving the rest of his clothes in place, because he’d already undressed the prince enough today. Arthur woke in a mess of flailing limbs while Merlin was tucking the sheets around him and Merlin wrapped his hands around the prince’s wrists, the tips of his fingers brushing against the soft, pale skin at the base of Arthur’s palms, holding him steady until Arthur slipped back into sleep. Even then Merlin didn’t leave, instead sitting in the chair beside the bed and looking at the prince. He looked different like this, with his face relaxed into sleep - cheeks flushed, lips slightly parted and his blonde eyelashes grazing against his cheeks. With his legs tangled in the sheets and his arm hanging over one side of the bed, he could almost have been any boy – one from Merlin’s time, perhaps, who he’d taken home and shagged the brains out of and left sleeping in his bed while he went out to the kitchen to make breakfast.

 

But at the same time, he knew that Arthur wasn’t any boy. He was Arthur Pendragon. Even if he wasn’t destined to be the greatest king Camelot would ever have, it still wouldn’t change the fact that he was something special. He wasn’t like all the other men Merlin had met – he didn’t act like them, he didn’t think like them, and even with his face pressed against the pillow and his hair sticking out all over the place, he was still more beautiful than any man Merlin had seen before.

 

Merlin pressed his head against the back of the chair, closing his eyes and listening to the sound of Arthur’s slow breathing. He could feel something like affection thudding inside his chest, deep and warm, and he knew that if he didn’t do something about it, it would worm into his heart and be impossible to get out. But he was tired. He could feel his mind drifting away from him, until his breathing slowed to match Arthur’s and there was nothing but darkness.

 

He woke hours later, neck sore and body weary, and snuck out of Arthur’s room as the sky was cracking dawn and the town below the castle was slowly shaking itself awake. When Arthur came barging into Merlin’s room three hours later with a scowl on his face that suggested the water Merlin had given him had done nothing for his hangover, Merlin stayed quiet and didn’t mention the previous night. Arthur didn’t need to know that Merlin had helped him to bed, nor that he’d sat beside the prince all through the dark, just to make sure that he was okay. It was a little bit silly and a little bit sentimental, and it was something that Merlin didn’t need to share. It would be his secret, one that he could look back on when he was old and grey and living in some tiny nursing home in Ealdor. It would warm him, the knowledge that there were some nights when Arthur Pendragon needed him there. That there had been a night when Merlin had been able to sit beside the prince and no one had told him that it wasn’t his place, or that he didn’t belong.

 

***

 

Arthur didn’t get any better as the day wore on. He had meetings with his father that he had to grind his way through, and by the time he arrived back in his chambers in the late afternoon he had dark shadows under his eyes and a scowl pressed across his face. Merlin had fetched some potion or other from Gaius to try and lift the prince’s spirits, but judging by Arthur’s face as he downed it, it tasted as bad as it smelled, and it had done little to improve Arthur’s mood.

 

“Fetch me my lunch,” he snapped as he walked into the chambers.

 

 Merlin looked up from where he’d been putting the last of Arthur’s clothes away and frowned. There was something in the way that Arthur acted after he’d talked with Uther that didn’t seem right to Merlin. Merlin didn’t know all that much about fathers, but from what he’d seen of the king, Uther spoke to Arthur like he did his knights. There was, he knew, something very wrong in the way Uther treated his son. Maybe it was the way Arthur would always come back to his chambers with his head bowed and a fierce frown on his face after he’d had a meeting with Uther. Maybe it was the way Merlin saw Arthur’s face light up when Uther praised him, as though the man’s praise was something rare, something to treasure and something to hold on to and remember through all of his father’s rage and anger and disappointment.

 

Sometimes, when Merlin walked into the room and saw Arthur flopped down across his bed like he didn’t ever want to get up again, he would have to resist the urge to comfort the prince. It was an odd feeling, because most of the time he was torn between annoyance and exasperation whenever he saw Arthur, but there was something in Arthur’s face at those moments that made Merlin want to tell him that there were people in the world who _would_ love him, completely and utterly and without fail, and that there would come a time when he would have the love of his people and of his queen. That love would fill him up, Merlin knew. That love would be enough.

 

But Merlin couldn’t tell him that, because he wasn’t the one Arthur needed. It wasn’t him who needed to hold Arthur close and convince him that there was one person in the world for which he didn’t need to try, that he could be the worse person he could possibly be and Merlin still wouldn’t leave. That wasn’t Merlin’s place.

 

He left the room quietly, bringing a plate up from the kitchen and setting it down on Arthur’s table. Arthur was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring at his hands with the firelight flickering over his bent head.

“Arthur,” Merlin said hesitantly.

 

 He knew that Arthur was just tired and hungover and probably needed to sleep more than anything else, but Merlin could see something else in his face and he couldn’t just leave it be. Will had always said he had two emotion glands where everyone else had one.

“Are you okay?” he asked, and Arthur looked up at him. Merlin could see that he was on the verge of telling Merlin to go and clean things, to stop being so _girly,_ but something stopped him.

“I’m fine,” he said shortly, getting up from the bed and walking over to the table. He didn’t sit down, though, instead standing with his hands clenched against the back of the chair.  

 

Merlin shook his head. “You’re not,” he said quietly. “I know – “ he paused as Arthur turned to look at him.

 

“I know what it’s like, having one parent,” he continued. He knew what it was like to have two hands raising him instead of four, two hands holding him on his first bicycle and two hands clasped tight around him on the days when his magic felt too big for him to contain within himself. He knew how those hands were always chapped from dishwashing liquid and the cold and the strain of having to do everything, all the time, with no one to take over. It was a tiny, sad feeling, one that never really went away. It felt as though you weren’t quite whole.

 

Arthur had his head bowed now, his finger running over the wood of the chair, a soft scrape that echoed around the quiet room. Merlin stepped forward, reaching out for Arthur’s shoulder, but as his hand brushed against Arthur’s skin the man shrugged him away.

“I don’t need your sympathy,” he said sharply. “I am the _prince_ , Merlin. You are a servant. What need could I possibly have for sympathy?”

 

Merlin stared at him, feeling the words cut though him. _You are a servant_. He knew what it implied – that he was nothing, that he was worth nothing. That his words didn’t count for anything.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “You’ve no need for it at all.” And he walked out the door before Arthur could say anything more, feeling the prince’s gaze heavy against him as he left.

 

***

 

Merlin spent the rest of the day in his room, with his ipod headphones stuck firmly in his ears and the volume turned as low as he could get it, to save the battery. He’d locked the door, but he didn’t much care if Gaius saw anyway. Gaius had seen Merlin pull worse things than an ipod out of his backpack.

 

He sat on his bed, his arms wrapped tightly around his knees and his head tilted back against the wall behind him. It was stupid, he thought. He seemed to end up storming out of Arthur’s chambers far more often than he should, especially considering that the man was an ass and Merlin had known that all along. Merlin _knew_ men like Arthur – they were the men you watched in clubs when you’d had too many pink drinks and they were the men you ground up against on the dancefloor, with a hot press of bodies around you and the sound of the bass throbbing heavy in your ears. Men like Arthur were the ones who you knew not to get close to, because they thought that everyone wanted to get close to them, that everyone wanted them. They put up barriers and didn’t let anyone past them, and, until now, Merlin had never really wanted to try.

 

He’d tried with Arthur, though. He didn’t even talk to Will about his father, mostly because Will had been beside him since he was about five and he knew just as well as Merlin did how Merlin’s mother would get that look on her face, sometimes, like she was being stronger than Merlin knew how to be. Will had been there through Merlin’s hard times, but Merlin had never really _talked_ to him about it. Will had known his father, if only for a little while, but Merlin had never known his at all.

 

He could use the spell, he supposed, if Gaius ever found it. A spell like that would open the whole of time up to Merlin. He could meet his father, he could see his mother as she was with her husband by her side. He could slide into the future – this future – and see Arthur as he’d always imagined him to be, with a crown on his head and a queen by his side.

 

Merlin pushed himself upright from the wall, his thumb sliding over his ipod to pause the music. _There_ was an idea. He could learn the spell when Gaius found it and slip into Camelot as it was in Arthur’s reign. He wouldn’t stay there for long - just for a moment, a few hours at most – but enough that he could see if that Arthur was anything like this one.

 

There was a tap on the door and Merlin yanked the earphones out of his ears, pushing them beneath his bedsheets and flicking his hand at the door to unlock it. Gaius poked his head around the edge of the door and frowned at him.

 

“Arthur wants you, Merlin,” he said, and Merlin sighed. Unless he got fired, he was going to have to keep on being Arthur’s servant until Gaius found him a way home and Merlin wasn’t going to let that get to him. Arthur was hungover and pratty and a complete ass, most of the time, and Merlin was just a manservant, nothing more. He wasn’t going to let his feelings get mixed up in this. Feelings were messy.

 

“Coming,” he said, grabbing his ipod from beneath his sheet and tucking it into the front pocket of his backpack. Gaius looked pointedly away as Merlin did so.

 

“I don’t want to know,” he said, noticing Merlin’s questioning glance. Merlin shrugged. It was probably safer that way.

 

***

 

Arthur didn’t apologise, but then Merlin had never really expected him to anyway. He didn’t seem to realise that Merlin had feelings, though whether that was because his previous servants hadn’t cared how the prince had treated them, or because all the men Arthur surrounded himself with never showed any, Merlin didn’t know.

 

He couldn’t understand the prince. Sometimes, it was as though they were friends. The times when Arthur came in after a long day of patrols and Merlin had his supper laid out on the table, and Arthur would look at Merlin with an odd expression on his face, like he was both grateful and surprised at the same time. Or in the spring, when Merlin picked flowers for Arthur’s chambers because no matter how often the prince protested, Merlin knew that _no one_ hated flowers. And besides, he had walked in once to see Arthur with his head bent over the vase, smelling them, though Arthur had thrown the vase at his head when Merlin had suggested that that was what he’d been doing. For every moment when Arthur was an ass there was one where he was almost nice to Merlin, and even though it had been months now since he’d met the prince, Merlin still couldn’t quite understand it.

 

***

 

The summer, when it came, was long and hot. It was, Gaius said, the hottest they’d had in years, and on more than one occasion Merlin found himself longing for airconditioning.

 

The nights stretched out almost endlessly, and Merlin had taken to lying on the stone floor to stave off the worst of the heat. There was something about that heat that smothered him. Perhaps it was the way he could smell the town by the end of the day, as though it was a living thing that had been left out to swelter in the sun. Perhaps it was the way his clothes stuck to his body whenever he was out on patrols with Arthur, his hair damp and matted and sweat rolling down the back of his neck.

 

“Can’t we stop?” he’d asked Arthur on the worst of the days, a burning morning at the height of summer when the sun was huge and hot in the sky and they’d been riding for hours through the open fields. Arthur looked over at him, his face golden in the sunlight and his eyes screwed up against the glare. He was wearing his chainmail, the heavy press of metal curving his shoulders until he was half-bent in the saddle. It didn’t look at all comfortable, Merlin thought.

 

“We can’t stop, Merlin, we’ve only been going for an hour,” Arthur scrubbed the back of one hand over his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt across his skin. Merlin frowned. It hadn’t felt like an hour, not when every second had been spent with the sun beating hard upon their heads.

 

“Can’t we stop anyway? We’ll get heatstroke if we continue on like this.” Merlin didn’t wait for an answer, instead sliding down out of his saddle and tugging his horse’s reins over its head, leading it towards the stand of trees at the side of the field they’d been riding through. Arthur swore and turned his horse about, spurring it until it was walking alongside Merlin.

 

“We _aren’t_ stopping,” he said firmly. Merlin reached out a hand and tethered the horse’s reins to the closest tree before collapsing with a sigh in the long grass at its base.

 

“I am,” he said. If they didn’t die from heat, they’d probably get really awful sunburn and die of skin cancer or something. God, Merlin missed sunblock.

 

Arthur was still astride his horse, staring down at Merlin like he wasn’t sure whether to yell at him or join him.

 

“Come on,” Merlin said, stretching his limbs out and feeling the soft tickle of grass brushing against his forearms. He hadn’t lain on the grass like this since he was young, unless he counted the times when he and Will had ended up flat on their backs after trying out some spell or other in the field behind Will’s house.

Those days usually started with Will running into Merlin’s room and saying ‘ _I bet you can’t…_ ’, and they ended with Merlin walking triumphantly home with his limbs covered in bruises and his heart full with the knowledge that yes, he could.

 

“You’re impossible, Merlin,” Arthur said, swinging one leg over the saddle and jumping down from his horse. “Really, the worst servant I’ve ever had,” he continued as he tethered his horse alongside Merlin’s. Merlin grinned lazily up at him.

 

“’M not so bad,” he said. “I’ve saved your life.” It was true enough, even if Arthur didn’t know about it half the time. Arthur knelt down in the grass beside him. He paused for a second as though he was unsure, but then Merlin reached out a hand and sent him tumbling over onto his back with a surprised yelp.

 

“ _Awful_ servant,” he muttered, but there was a tiny smile pressed across his mouth as he said it. Merlin closed his eyes and let his mind wander a little, until his head was filled with the feel of the grass and the soft, steady sound of Arthur’s breathing and the heat of the day, diluted by the cool shadow of the trees but still swirling warm around his body. He could hear the soft snuffling of the horses and the high calls of the birds, but beyond that the world might have been empty. Merlin wondered what it would be like if there was nothing but him and Arthur and this field. They’d get along alright, he supposed, when they weren’t bickering with each other.

 

“Where are you from, Merlin?” Arthur asked suddenly.

 

Merlin blinked at him. “Ealdor,” he said, because he’d had this conversation with Gaius and it turned out that there was an Ealdor here too, a tiny cluster of houses and fenced-in paddocks on the edge of Cendred’s kingdom. Merlin thought that he might like to see it someday, to discover what his home was like in the centuries before his own, when it still had more forest than concrete and the main road was nothing more than a beaten down line of dirt through the centre of the village.

 

“Cendred’s kingdom,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “Did you like it there?”

 

Merlin thought about that. He had liked it, yes, in the way that any boy liked a home with a roof and a mother and enough grass in the backyard to run around on with a friend, but it hadn’t felt like the place that he was supposed to stay. It had for Will – Merlin could see him sinking into Ealdor as he grew older, deciding which bars he liked the best and which he wouldn’t set foot in for all the beer in the world, complaining bitterly about the state of the buses and yet glaring fiercely at anyone from Camelot who dared to do the same thing. Will fit there, as though he’d been born Ealdor-sized, in just the right shape to be able to wedge himself tightly into that world.

 

Merlin didn’t know where he fit anymore. He had loved Ealdor because it was his birthplace, it was in his veins, but there was something about Camelot – about _this_ Camelot – that felt right. Merlin didn’t know which world was his own anymore.

 

“Yes,” Merlin said simply. “But I like it here too.”

 

He thought he caught the briefest curve of a smile, before Arthur turned his face away.

 

It was only when they rose from the ground some time later, clothes grass-stained and smelling of earth, that Merlin realised. Perhaps it had been the heat, or the way the world had seemed to drop away for a little while as they lay there, but for those few moments in the grass, they hadn’t argued at all.

 

***

 

Merlin tried not to think about the time passing. When he wasn’t with Arthur, he spent his days talking to Gwen, or helping Gaius out when the old man was buried beneath his work. It was easier to pretend that he’d only been in Camelot for days when he was busy - when he was sitting beside Gwen in the courtyard of the castle, or when he was trying to remember which of Gaius’ potions he was meant to be giving to which noble.

 

There were things that didn’t change at all as the months went by. Arthur was still nothing like the king that Merlin had imagined him to be, Uther remained cruelly intolerant of magic, and Gwen was still far too sweet and good and kind to everyone. Merlin sometimes wondered whether she wasn’t the one who was supposed to be the queen after all, but then again, he didn’t think that there were many other Guineveres around Camelot.

 

But there were other things that changed a lot, especially after the incident with Morgana. When they’d found her in the forest, Merlin wanted to believe that she’d escaped from captors. He _needed_ to believe her, because the legend was a lot harder to stomach when you knew each of its characters. Morgana wasn’t a bad person, not like the story had made her out to be. She was a good woman, Merlin knew, but one who had seen all of Uther’s cruelty and his destruction and decided that it was something which she would fight against with every fibre of her being. It put her against Arthur too, because Arthur played a part in his father’s rule, and there would always be some part of his reign which he would have learnt from Uther, and a part of him which could not cast aside the other man completely. Arthur would grieve when Uther was dead, Merlin knew. It was impossible to see the truth of one man’s nature when you were so connected to him.

 

But Morgana was not Arthur, and she had found hatred for the king - perhaps even more than he deserved from her, because she had not grown up knowing what it was like to hide her magic from him. She’d stumbled across it in the night time, unsuspecting, and in the day she had sat at Uther’s table and he had shown her love. There was no betrayal from him towards her – she might have suspected what his reaction to her magic would be, but she couldn’t know for sure. It was funny, Merlin thought, how similar their positions were and yet how different they were in the ways they had decided to act. Morgana had turned away from the Pendragons, while Merlin still held onto the hope that there was something worth saving within that family.

 

Merlin found that as the days grew shorter and summer drew to an end, he began to lose track of how things had changed. He could remember the legend, of course, because its story was pressed into his brain, but he couldn’t _see_ it anymore. He tried to imagine King Arthur, sometimes, when it was the middle of the night and he was curled beneath his sheets, listening to Gaius’ snoring echoing around the chambers. He couldn’t seem to picture him clearly, though, and Merlin began to think that soon, when he imagined King Arthur, he’d see his Arthur, the prince. He would be older, the years lined across his skin, but he would still have that crooked smile that broke across his face when Merlin was least expecting it, the one that he tried to clamp down on the edges of, because princes weren’t meant to laugh with their servants. He would still have that serious blue gaze he turned on Merlin when he was trying to explain something, and he’d still be a bit of a prat.

 

***

 

Hunting was a routine thing for Arthur, something that was squished in between all of the weekly patrols and the meetings with Uther and the training sessions he held with the knights.  At first, Merlin had thought that it was a way of keeping strong, of making sure that he kept in form and that he could use weapons that he didn't have to swing through the air with both hands. But after he'd been out with Arthur on several hunts, he began to realise that it was something more than that.

 

Arthur _liked_ hunting, Merlin realised – not the killing part, but the focus of it, the way it was just him and the trees and the faint traces of animals that had passed by, a steady, almost imperceptible trail you could follow until you found its source. Arthur – impatient, headstrong Arthur – was always his quietest on the hunt, and there was a sense of calm surrounding him while he was focused on the forest that even Merlin, stumbling over all of the tree roots in sight, couldn't quite puncture.

 

Merlin supposed that that was why Arthur had turned from the usual trail at the end of that morning and instead of heading back towards home, he had instead started towards the tiny tavern Merlin could see nestled in the valley below them.

 

“Arthur, we're supposed to be back for the delegation visiting this afternoon,” Merlin said, but Arthur didn't slow.

 

“We've got time for a pint of mead,” he said and pushed on ahead before Merlin could remind him that the last time he tried a pint of mead, he ended up passed out on Merlin in the passageway.

 

The tavern was small and smoky, with wooden tables at which what looked like half of the mercenaries of Camelot's outlying regions were seated. Arthur, of course, was completely oblivious to the odd stares that they were getting as they made their way over to a table.

 

“Stop fidgeting, Merlin,” he said, and Merlin turned back to Arthur, peeling his eyes away from the glare of a particularly sullen-looking fellow over by the bar.

 

The bartender was a friendly looking lady, who – to Merlin's amusement and Arthur's disgruntled disbelief – seemed more interested in Merlin than in the prince. Merlin wondered if she was a little blind – Arthur was gorgeous, firstly, and secondly, he certainly wasn't dressed like a peasant.

 

Merlin looked over at Arthur's expression as the woman walked away and grinned, even though he knew that the woman would have stood a better chance with Arthur, peasant though she was, than with Merlin, because Merlin didn't think that anyone other than Arthur – or someone who was like him in every single way – would attract his attention.

 

It felt nice when she tried, though, and Merlin grinned at Arthur as he waited for the lady to return with their mead.

 

“What?” Arthur asked with a grumpy frown. “Stop grinning like an idiot, Merlin, she's only a barmaid.”

Merlin resisted the urge to whack Arthur across the face with the wooden tray lying on the edge of their table.

 

“You're in trouble then,” he replied. “You'd think her standards would be lower than most of the girls you're aiming for.”

 

It was a low blow, one that Merlin wouldn't usually have made, but comments about where he  - and where people like him – stood in the order of things hit closer to home than Arthur knew, because Merlin hadn't been born into this system and he could see its unfairness better than most.

 

Arthur seemed to recognise that after a moment, because his scowl softened out of his face.

 

“You're right,” he said, and Merlin opened his mouth to say something – probably to ask Arthur whether he was feeling alright, because he _never_ admitted that Merlin was right – when there was a loud bang from the door and everything went to hell.

 

Merlin wasn't sure how he ended up throwing plates at anyone within ten feet of him, or how Arthur ended up punching several shrieking men in the face, and he certainly had no idea who the dark-haired man with the chest that looked like it had been carved by god was. He tuned all of that out, the way he did with most of his battles in Camelot, and tried to focus on protecting Arthur as best he could, hoping that the rest of it would just sort itself out. It usually did, in the end.

 

When the dark-haired man ended up on his back with a knife buried deep in his thigh, however, Merlin felt a wave of that sick, familiar unease he always felt when someone got hurt, because he didn't know if it was always supposed to end up that way, or whether it had somehow been his fault.

 

“We have to help him, Arthur,” he said, after he'd knelt down beside the man and bound his wound as best he could. Arthur stared down at him. Merlin knew that he must look a sight, kneeling beside the man with his hands wet with blood and his clothes heavy with dust from the fight.

 

“The man saved my life,” Arthur said, nodding, then lifted him as well as he could and turned towards the door.

 

Merlin thought that it probably wasn't all that necessary for Arthur to announce to the whole tavern who he was and where they could find him, though. He understood – well, sort of – Arthur's desire to get acknowledgement for saving the bartender, but he didn't think that issuing what was basically an open invitation for anyone wanting to get back at the prince to come right on in was quite the way to do it.

 

Merlin didn't say anything, though, because comments like that usually sparked a whole lot of bickering and it was still a long way back to the castle. The man slung over the back of Arthur's horse was pale now, and Merlin knew that he needed Gaius' help, as soon as he could possibly get it.

 

***

 

When the man introduced himself, Merlin's first thought was _oh, right._ It fitted, even if this Gwaine wasn't exactly how Merlin had pictured the most gallant of Arthur's knights. He was gorgeous, yes, but there was something altogether too familiar about him. Not physically, though he did have hair that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Loreal advertisement, but the way he acted seemed closer to those men that Merlin knew in his own time, rather than any of those here. He still had the chivalry that Lancelot and Leon had, of course, and from what Merlin could tell he was as good at fighting as any of the knights that Merlin had met, but there was something in the way he grinned at Merlin when Merlin brought him breakfast and the way he seemed utterly at ease, chatting half-naked in a stranger's bed, that seemed a bit like – well, a bit like Will.

 

“So you know the prince,” he said after Merlin had walked through the door.

 

“Yes,” Merlin replied, setting down the tray on his bedside table and turning to look at the man. Gaius had tended to the wound on his leg as best he could, and the physician had told Arthur that the man would be fine, but Merlin had still agreed to let him sleep in Merlin's bed. Between himself, Lancelot and Gwaine, Merlin's bed was getting around quite a bit. Merlin envied it.

 

Gwaine was still thinking over his last answer, looking at him with a knowing smile pressed into the corners of his mouth.

 

“I'm his manservant,” Merlin explained. “I clean his things.” And take care of him when he's drunk and protect him from sorcerers and spend far too much time thinking about him, he added silently.

 

Gwaine nodded, shifting on the bed until his hands were thrown behind his head and his chest was pushed out. Merlin's eyes flicked down to it. He couldn't help it – it was a _nice_ chest. Not as nice as Arthur's, of course, but there was something about the brown, smooth curve of it that Merlin liked.

 

“See anything you like?” asked Gwaine. Merlin jumped, looking quickly back up into Gwaine's face.

 

“I didn't -” he said. “I don't -” But Gwaine grinned.

 

“Stop stammering, princess, it's okay,” he interrupted. “I'd do the same if you were shirtless.” He swept his gaze slowly over Merlin's body and then winked. Merlin laughed, relaxing.

 

“Don't tell anyone though, will you?” Merlin asked, because the last thing he needed was to interfere with Arthur's life even more, by letting him discover a whole other side of his manservant.

 

“I wouldn't,” Gwaine said. “Though I've heard some things about this king of yours, Merlin. Tavern talk is as good as any for learning about a kingdom, and this Uther Pendragon might not have been so different from us, back in his younger days.” Merlin blinked. _Uther_ wasn't like that, surely.

 

At that moment, Gaius rapped on the door of Merlin's room and poked his head around the edge.

 

“Arthur wants you,” he said, nodding at Merlin. “And Gwaine, you should be resting.” He raised an eyebrow at the two of them and then ducked back out of the room again.

 

Merlin sighed. Arthur would want him to clean the man's chambers – he'd turned them almost upside-down when he was looking for his hunting gear the previous day. Merlin walked over to his backpack and slid his ipod up the sleeve of his tunic, using his body to shield the motion from Gwaine. Arthur generally didn't stick around to watch Merlin work anymore and Merlin had found that it was a lot more interesting when he could sweep the floor in time with the music.

 

He'd used his ipod several times since arriving in Camelot, mostly on days when it was dark and the skies were emptying water over the castle, and Merlin had felt the need for music. He'd been so worried that he was draining the battery last time he'd used it that he'd tried to charge it up with magic, but all he'd succeeded in doing was turning the underside an odd gold colour and vanishing the battery sign completely.

 

He pulled on his boots and turned to Gwaine, who was watching him with interest.

“Gaius is just next door if you need anything,” he said, and Gwaine nodded.

 

“Go on,” he said. “Your prince is waiting.” Merlin stuck his tongue out at the man on the way out the door.

 

***

 

Arthur was lying across his bed when Merlin came into the prince's chambers, his legs crossed at the ankle and his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

 

“How is Gwaine?” he asked when he heard Merlin come in, keeping his eyes fixed on the roof.

 

“He's awake,” Merlin said. “Gaius thinks he'll be fine.”

 

“Good,” Arthur replied, sitting up and looking at Merlin. “He's an excellent fighter, isn't he?”

 

“Compared to you, sire?” Merlin asked, a grin sliding onto his face. “I'd say he's the best.” Arthur scowled and reached out a hand for something to throw, but he was still sitting on the bed and the only thing within reach was his rug. He threw it anyway, and Merlin ducked, but it landed squarely on top of him. Arthur roared with a laughter as Merlin struggled to fight his way out of it.

 

He ended up sprawled on the ground beside Arthur's feet. Arthur leaned over to stare down at him and then started laughing all over again.

 

“Prat,” Merlin said, nudging one of his arms against Arthur's foot, and Arthur nudged him back.

 

“Idiot,” he replied, and Merlin grinned.

 

Arthur was quiet for a moment, and Merlin looked up to see the edge of an expression he didn’t recognise flickering over his face. Arthur didn’t say anything about it, though, instead standing up, stepping over Merlin and strapped on his sword belt.

 

“My floor needs cleaning,” he said, voice oddly rough, and then he left to run through some drills with the knights. Merlin thought that he'd probably look in on Gwaine, too, because he'd seemed particularly concerned about him.

 

Merlin slid his ipod out as soon as Arthur left, and – frowning a little at its new colour – he slid it into the waistband of his breeches, running the earphones up beneath his tunic to his ears.

 

He wondered what it would have been like if Arthur was born in Merlin's time, as an ordinary man, rather than in this world as a prince. Arthur would probably still have been arrogant and a bit of an ass, Merlin supposed, although he didn't know how much that was because he was a prince and how much of it was just Arthur's natural attitude. He opened the cupboard in the corner of Arthur's chambers and reached for the broom, a rough wooden thing he'd splintered his hands with a hundred times.

 

Perhaps they would have met, he thought, dragging the broom across the stone floor, the handle hard beneath his fingers. Arthur would have been a model in Merlin's time, perhaps, or maybe a businessman. He couldn't quite tell, couldn't pin Arthur into any other profession than the one he was in. He was born to be a prince and raised to be a king, and that was as much  a part of this time as the castle was. Merlin couldn't really see him living in the 21st century, when his destiny was, and always would be, here.

 

He let himself imagine it, though, just for a while. He stooped to pick up several pairs of breeches Arthur had tossed around the room and tried to picture where he would meet Arthur first, and what it would be like if they were both on the same level and Arthur didn't have some huge legend to create with his life.

Perhaps he would have run into Arthur on the bus – only Arthur wasn't really the sort Merlin could imagine catching a bus. Merlin frowned as he swept the broom over the top of Arthur's cupboard, the song on his ipod thudding low in his ears.

 

That was where Merlin would meet him, he decided. A club, or perhaps a concert – somewhere dark and throbbing with music. Somewhere where Merlin would have too much alcohol in his system and Arthur would be relaxed enough to consider dancing with tall, pale boys wearing skinny jeans.

  
Merlin wondered what it would be like, to show Arthur the pulse of a dancefloor, the hot press of bodies and the hard thrust of hips. He would love to show Arthur the way a bassline could move through a body and the way it felt to have someone dancing flush against you while the music shook the air around you both. He wondered if Arthur – ordinary, 21st century Arthur – would like that sort of thing.

 

He set aside the broom and reached a hand beneath his tunic, turning up the volume of the song until it was loud and throbbing in his ears.

 

Merlin closed his eyes, imagining the scene. He would have headed straight for the dancefloor, leaving Will to chat up some girl on the sticky floor over by the bar. He would push into the centre, letting the music flow over him until his veins were full of it and his chest was pounding  with sound. Arthur would see him then, and stare for a moment, before pushing his way through the crowd to Merlin, walking with that bouncing, arrogant stride of his. Merlin would pull him close, smile up at him, and move his hips like _that_ , hard against Arthur, until they could feel each other there in the darkness and the beat was thudding like a cord between them. He would be free to press up against that Arthur, to slide his hands across the man and to _grind_ him, filthy and hard.

 

Merlin heard a soft noise from the doorway, and opened his eyes to see Arthur standing there, gaping at him. Or, more specifically, at his hips, which Merlin had been moving in a way that he generally reserved for the very darkest and filthiest of clubs back home, when he’d wanted to lure some man or other into dancing with him. Merlin jumped, tugging his earphones quickly out of his ears and beneath his tunic.

 

“I was dancing,” he said defensively, cutting off Arthur's question before he could ask it.

 

“You were _dancing_ ,”Arthur echoed faintly. “That wasn't dancing, Merlin. That was...” he trailed off, his blue gaze back on Merlin's hips again. Merlin tried not to think about how that sort of dancing would have looked to someone from this time. It couldn't have been good.

 

“Arthur?” he asked carefully. Arthur's eyes snapped back up to his face, his jaw tightening as he realised that he'd been staring.

 

“Out,” he said suddenly, his voice sounding strained. “Go and muck out the stables.”

 

“But I did that yesterday,” Merlin protested, because he had – and alright, yes, he'd used magic and it had only taken five minutes, but Arthur didn't know that.

 

“Do it again,” Arthur ordered, his gaze now pointedly fixed on the wall behind Merlin. He kept it there until Merlin had put the broom back and walked out of the chambers, completely mystified by Arthur's sudden change of temper.

 

***

 

It took days for his mood to lighten, during which time Merlin spent a lot of time talking with Gwaine and dealing with the latest threat to Arthur's life. He sometimes thought that Arthur must walk around with a 'come kill me, I'm the king's son' sign on his back, because he'd been attacked more often than anyone Merlin knew.

 

Of course, when Merlin was so used to saving Arthur’s life it was often hard not to intervene when Arthur was doing things that were dangerous but that he didn’t need saving for, like jousting. He’d continually ignored all Merlin’s warnings about how dangerous the  tournaments were, even though Merlin had told him all of the things that could possibly go wrong, from death to brain damage to getting splinters in his eyes. Merlin had seen enough horror movies to know that getting splinters in your eyes would _hurt._

 

But Arthur wouldn’t listen. It was his duty, he said to Merlin, and the people expected him to do it. How could they support a prince who did not prove himself to be a worthy leader? He didn’t seem to understand that there were other ways to prove yourself, ways that didn’t involve galloping full speed towards a wooden spear.

 

The more time Merlin spent with Gwaine, the more he came to realise that the man was _wonderful_. Sure, he was happy to hit on anything that moved, and he ended up lying on the floor of the tavern, drunk, even more than Will did, but he was gorgeous, brave, cheerful, kind, funny – in short, everything that Merlin had ever looked for in a man.

 

But Merlin realised one other thing during those few days he spent with Gwaine, while Arthur was still keeping him at a distance and Merlin barely said two words to him – that it didn't matter how amazing Gwaine was, because he wasn't the man that Merlin wanted. The man Merlin wanted was Arthur.

 

***

 

There was something about Gwaine that made it impossible for Merlin not to tell the man when something was bothering him. He bounced cheerfully over every problem and sought out trouble more often than any man Merlin had ever met.

 

So when Gwaine made his way up to the roof, where Merlin was sitting and watching the clouds float past above him, and settled himself down beside Merlin, Merlin couldn’t help but tell him that he cared more than he should about Arthur.

 

“It isn’t that I like him, or anything,” he said, running a hand through his hair. Gwaine made a soft noise that Merlin thought it was best to take as agreement. “It’s just that he’s _Prince_ _Arthur._ ”

 

Gwaine sighed, slinging a warm arm around his shoulder. “There are plenty of other knights to get yourself besotted over, Merlin,” he said. “And there are plenty that’d be willing to have you.” He winked and Merlin felt a blush spreading over his cheeks.

 

“Now that’s a tempting offer,” he said after a moment. “But are there any you haven’t gotten to first?” Gwaine grinned and shoved an elbow playfully into his side and Merlin almost tumbled over sideways.

 

“Come on, princess,” Gwaine said, climbing to his feet and holding out a hand to help Merlin upright. “I know just how to cheer you up.”

 

As it turned out, Gwaine seemed to think that the best way to help Merlin forget his troubles was to take him down to the tavern and ply him with mead until he was half-slumped across the table and he couldn’t tell whether he was spinning around, or whether the room was.

 

“That’s the spirit,” Gwaine said delightedly, grinning down at him. “You’ll feel better in no time.”

 

Merlin mumbled a half-hearted protest into the wood of the table, wondering how on earth Gwaine was still conscious. Over the past few hours, he’d drunk almost twice what Merlin had and Merlin could barely sit up straight. Christ, he was going to regret this in the morning.

 

Things got steadily worse after one of the knights – Merlin suspected it was Bedevere – decided that a drinking competition was needed, and soon after that Merlin found himself sitting on top of the table downing a flagon of mead while Gwaine and Percival cheered him on. Sometimes, Merlin thought hazily as he slammed the empty flagon back down onto the table, there wasn’t so much difference between Ealdor in his time and Camelot in this one. It was good to know that some things lasted. Even if it was only this.

 

It was sometime after midnight when Gwaine decided that he’d had enough to drink – or at least he’d decided that he couldn’t leave Merlin slumped under the table for the rest of the night, which was where he’d been since he’d tried to pull off his shirt and had gotten tangled up in it and fallen over backwards. Gwaine stumbled his way over to Merlin and threw an arm around him, pulling him upright and roaring a goodnight to Leon and Percival, who were now sitting by the bar and playing some sort of a dice game. The cold wind outside the tavern whipped harshly against Merlin’s face, waking him up enough that he could walk back towards the castle without his arms wrapped around Gwaine for support.

 

“Stupid,” he mumbled. Gwaine glanced over at him.

“You or me or Arthur?” he asked, sliding his arm firmly around Merlin’s waist. Merlin frowned, thinking.

“All of you,” he said after a moment. “And Will.” It was generally Will’s fault when Merlin ended up so off his face that he could hardly walk straight, and Merlin didn’t think the man would let something as insignificant as a few centuries stop him. Gwaine snuffed out a laugh.

“Who’s Will, then?”

 

Merlin tried to shrug and almost fell over, throwing out a hand to stop himself. It collided hard with the stone of the castle courtyard and he rubbed it, frowning.

“Friend,” he said. “M’ best friend. Usually the one getting me drunk.” He waved his sore hand at Gwaine accusingly.

 

“Sounds like a good fellow,” Gwaine said with a smile. He caught Merlin’s waving hand and turned it over, looking at it.

“Hardly a scratch,” he said, and before Merlin could stop him he pressed his lips against Merlin’s knuckles, just once, his mouth soft against Merlin’s skin, and then looked up at Merlin with a gleam in his eye.

“Oh,” Merlin said, staring at his hand, and he probably would have stood there for the rest of the night if Gwaine hadn’t tugged on his shirt and led him inside.

 

“Why’d it have to be Arthur?” he said as they walked along the passageway, Gwaine’s hand still pressed around Merlin’s. “Legend of Gwaine, that’d work.” It wasn’t fair that he’d had to go and fall in love with King Arthur as a boy, and then like Prince Arthur far too much as a man, when there were nice men like Gwaine who were perfectly willing to – well, Merlin didn’t exactly know what Gwaine was perfectly willing to do, but the man’s thumb was tracing gently across the back of his hand and Merlin had a feeling that it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out.

 

“And I didn’t even get a TARDIS,” he added sadly. He was supposed to have some simple way of getting home. Time travel always seemed to work like that – the brave young hero would have a machine that he pressed buttons on, one where he could flick a dial or two and jump in and out of whatever time he wanted. Merlin didn’t have that - he didn’t have anything but his magic and that didn’t even work properly, half the time. He was stranded in this era and, as the months stretched onwards, he was beginning to feel that he might not ever get back. What if he was stuck here forever, destined to creep around the edges of this world, afraid to change anything, afraid to live?

 

He blinked and tried to drag his thoughts painfully back to the present as he realised that they’d stopped walking. They were somewhere inside the castle, though Merlin didn’t know exactly where, because all of the passageways looked the same when it was dark and you had a stomach full of mead. He hoped that they were near his chambers, because Merlin’s head was spinning a little faster than he was used to and why was he suddenly leaning against the wall?

 

“Come on, princess,” he heard Gwaine say and he felt the man’s hands wrap around his waist and pull him upright. Gwaine’s face was close to his, his teeth flashing in the dark as he tried to keep Merlin from slumping over sideways again. Merlin reached up a hand to the side of Gwaine’s face, feeling the rough scrape of the man’s beard against his fingers. He paused for a second, waiting for his brain to give him a reason why he shouldn’t lean forward and press his lips against Gwaine’s. _Arthur,_ it supplied feebly. But Arthur didn’t like him; Arthur wasn’t supposed to like him. Arthur was wrong for him in every single way.

 

Merlin leant forward, sliding one hand around the back of Gwaine’s neck. What happened next was probably supposed to have been a kiss, but it was dark and everything was still spinning and when Merlin leant forward he smacked his forehead hard against Gwaine’s.

 

“Ow,” he said, reeling backwards and tumbling over onto the hard stone floor.

 

Gwaine peered down at him, rubbing his forehead.  “What was that?” he asked.

 

Merlin frowned.  “A kiss?” he offered, even though Merlin had done enough kissing to know that he’d ruined that one completely. Gwaine laughed and reached out to take Merlin’s hand, pulling him upright and swinging him around until he was leaning safely against the wall with Gwaine’s arms warm on either side of his body.

 

“Try again,” he said softly, his breath warm against Merlin’s ear. Merlin leant forward and pressed his mouth against Gwaine’s, feeling the man’s lips part beneath his own and his tongue sliding hot and slick into Merlin’s mouth. It was slow, a warm tangle of lips and teeth and tongues that didn’t seem like the other drunk kisses Merlin had had, where Merlin was more focused on tugging off clothes and getting them both into bed. Merlin had his hands pushed through Gwaine’s hair and Gwaine’s fingers were running up and down Merlin’s sides, burning against his skin, but he made no attempt to tug at the laces of Merlin’s breeches.

 

This was Gwaine’s distraction, Merlin realised later. It wasn’t the mead, or the endless stream of innuendo he’d been spouting in the tavern that he’d intended as a way of making Merlin feel better, but this. He didn’t mean anything by it, it was simply his way of making Merlin forget about the prince, if only for a few minutes. It was his way of making sure that Merlin knew that even if Arthur didn’t want him, it didn’t mean that everyone didn’t, and Merlin loved him for that.

 

“Gwaine?  What are you… _Merlin_?”

 

Merlin broke away, looking over Gwaine’s shoulder at the man standing in the doorway opposite. His brain was still spinning with the mead and the feel of Gwaine’s lips and it took him two seconds too long to realise who it was standing there.

 

“Arthur. Shit,” he said. Arthur was staring at him, open-mouthed, his eyes drifting from Merlin’s flushed cheeks to the way Gwaine’s hands were wrapped firmly around his waist. Merlin felt a dull edge of panic pressing in his chest, because Arthur wasn’t supposed to see this.

 

“Arthur,” Gwaine said, nodding at the prince, and then Gwaine was tugging him down the hall and they were laughing like idiots, even though Merlin knew that Arthur had seen and that Arthur would _know,_ now, that he was completely, utterly queer.

 

Merlin didn’t know if Gwaine had known that it was Arthur’s room they’d been outside, or whether it was just another stupid twist of fate, or destiny, or whatever the hell the dragon called it, but he did know that however Arthur thought of him now would be defined by that moment in the passageway.

 

Gwaine didn’t let go of his hand until they had made it back into Gaius’ chambers. They collapsed on Merlin’s bed in a heap, laughing as their legs got tangled up in each other’s. Merlin ended up lying with his face pressed against Gwaine’s chest, and he stayed that way until morning broke pale across the sky.

 

***

 

Merlin woke with his head pounding in a way it hadn’t since he’d come to Camelot, and his leg numb from where Gwaine had been lying on it. There was something comforting about that, though, because it was the way he always used to wake after a night out with Will. _Gwaine’s my friend_ , Merlin realised as he pushed the man’s arm off his chest and sat upright in bed. A friend he could drink with and tell things to and kiss outside of Arthur’s chambers.

 

“Shit,” Merlin said, as the events of the previous night came flooding back. He groaned, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. Gwaine groaned beside him and cracked open an eye, peering up at Merlin.

 

“Morning, princess,” he mumbled, and then rolled over and went back to sleep. Merlin sighed and retrieved his boots, pulling them onto his feet. He’d just have to face Arthur and explain. It would be an uncomfortable conversation, but one that Merlin had had before.

 

But when Merlin arrived at Arthur’s chambers and pushed open the door, Arthur wasn’t anywhere to be seen. There were dirty plates on the table, as though Arthur had already eaten breakfast, and the pack Arthur usually took when they went on patrols was not hanging in its usual spot on the hook behind his door.

 

Merlin wandered back through the castle, heading for the training field, because whenever Arthur wasn’t around that was the most likely place that he’d be. He found Leon practicing with his sword, his face serious as he concentrated on each swing, but Arthur was nowhere to be found.

 

He saw Gwen sitting in on the steps of the castle as he walked across the courtyard. She was staring off into the distance, unfocused, and it was a few moments before she noticed that Merlin was standing in front of her.

 

“Have you seen Arthur?” he asked. She looked up at him in confusion.

“Uther’s sent him on patrol to some of the outlying villages,” she said. “Didn’t he tell you?” Merlin bit his lip. He usually went with Arthur on trips like that, especially since his horse-riding wasn’t half bad now. But this time, Arthur hadn’t even told Merlin that he was going.

 

“No,” he replied, sitting down on the stone step beside Gwen. “No, he didn’t.” She put her head on his shoulder and sighed.

 

“Everything’s changing, isn’t it?” she said after a moment. Merlin nodded. Everything _was_ changing. Morgana had changed, Arthur had changed, Gwaine had arrived, and things felt different now. It wasn’t always there, there were some days when everything felt just as it had when Merlin first arrived in Camelot, but on others – at times when he was trying to stop Morgana from destroying the castle before its time, or when Uther had ordered the execution of someone Merlin knew, someone he liked – it was at those moments when Merlin felt that things weren’t the way they had always been. He felt as though the world was drifting close to the edge of something dangerous.

 

“It’ll work out, though,” he said, but he knew he was reassuring himself as much as he was her.

Gwen didn’t stay in the courtyard for long after that, because Morgana called her inside to tidy up her chambers. Merlin watched her face fall as she heard Morgana’s tone and he hugged her tight before she stood up to leave. It wasn’t fair that she had to be the one standing beside Morgana as Morgana turned away from all she’d once believed in, because all Gwen had was Morgana and it would hurt to see her fall.

 

He walked back up to Arthur’s chambers after that, but all of Arthur’s cupboards were neatly closed and there was nothing that needed cleaning. Merlin walked around the room for a while, then sat down on the windowsill and stared out over the courtyard, resting his pounding head on his knees. It was probably for the best that Arthur was angry at him, because Merlin wasn’t supposed to have gotten that close to him, anyway. But despite that, he couldn’t stop the ache inside his chest, the one that had appeared the moment he’d seen Arthur’s expression over Gwaine’s shoulder.  He wrapped his arms around his knees and pushed his face into the crook of his elbow, inhaling deeply and trying not to think. This world wasn’t his. Or perhaps it was, but it was his in the way that any story belonged to its reader. He was supposed to love the characters for what he could read of them, not push himself in alongside them and try to change everything. That wasn’t his place.

 

“I thought I’d find you here.”

 

Merlin looked up to see Gwaine standing in the doorway, his arms folded across his body and his eyes fixed on Merlin’s face.

 

Merlin gave a weak smile and Gwaine walked over and sat down beside him, looking out the window and sighing. “I was in love once,” he said, and Merlin blinked, surprised. Gwaine didn’t seem to be the type to fall in love. He was – well, Merlin had assumed that he was Camelot’s equivalent of Will, and Will wouldn’t touch love with a ten foot pole.

 

Gwaine noticed his surprised expression and snuffed a laugh. “Don’t look at me like that, Merlin, I’m not all that bad.” Merlin raised an eyebrow, remembering the few nights that he’d accompanied Gwaine down to the tavern. The man had hit on everything that was alive in the room and a few things that weren’t.

 

“I was young,” he said. “Young and still living at home and she was just so _beautiful_ , Merlin.”  He grinned.

 

“What happened?” Merlin asked, but he knew the answer well enough. Time happened. With enough time, people could change. Women could fall out of love, men could fall into it. Princes could become kings.

 

“Her family didn’t approve,” Gwaine said. “We were too poor for them.” Merlin heard a sort of weary bitterness in his tone, one that suggested he’d been over the memory a thousand times in his head.

 

“Sorry,” Merlin said quietly. Gwaine shrugged, clapping a hand down on Merlin’s shoulder.

 

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “At least I didn’t –“ he broke off when he heard a shout from the courtyard outside the window. They both looked down through the narrow pane of glass to see a servant running towards a horse –Arthur’s, Merlin realised – which was standing restlessly near the gate, its head tossing wildly.

 _Where was Arthur?_ was the first thought that flashed through Merlin’s mind, but then the horse turned towards their window and Merlin could see that Arthur was still astride the animal, his hands loose upon the reins and his body slumped motionless over its neck.

 

***

 

“He’s fine, Merlin, stop fussing.” Merlin looked up from where he’d been rearranging Arthur’s sheets to see Gaius frowning at him.

 

“He might not be,” Merlin said. “He might have brain damage, or something.”

 

Gaius sighed. “Honestly, Merlin, anyone would think you actually _cared_ for him,” he said, putting the stopper back into one of his ointment bottles and sliding it back into his bag.

 

“I do not,” Merlin said quickly, and then bit his lip as Gaius raised an eyebrow at him. “I just – I don’t think Camelot would have much of a future with a bedridden king.”

 

“He will be fine, Merlin,” Gaius said, and Merlin nodded. Arthur had been knocked out before, but it was different this time, because he hadn’t seen it happen. Usually, in all those moments when Merlin had saved Arthur’s life, he’d done it with the prince lying unconscious at his feet, but Merlin had known that Arthur was safe, because Merlin wouldn’t let anyone hurt him.

 

But this time Merlin hadn’t been there.  He had thought, in that moment when they pulled Arthur down from the saddle of his horse, that the prince was dead, and Gwaine’s fingers, which had been digging hard into his shoulder as they watched, suggested that he had thought the same.

 

 There was a sound at the door and Merlin looked up to see Uther striding into the room, his eyes fixed on Arthur’s limp form in the bed and his hands clenched tight within their leather gloves.

 

“I came as soon as I heard,” he said. “How is he?”

 

“He’s fine, Sire,” Gaius said. “He’s sleeping now.” He stared over at Merlin, as though warning him off mentioning anything about brain damage while Uther was within earshot. Merlin kept his mouth firmly closed and resisted the urge to roll his eyes back at Gaius. He wasn’t an idiot.

 

“You,” Uther said, looking over at him. “Why weren’t you with him?” Merlin opened his mouth, looking frantically from Uther to Gaius and back again, because he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell Uther that Arthur was angry at him, that Arthur had seen him in the passageway with Gwaine and chose not to take him along.

 

Gaius cleared his throat. “It was my fault, sire,” he said. Uther turned his head to stare at the old man.

 

“I needed Merlin’s assistance this morning.”

 

Uther considered that for a long moment, his gaze steady on Gaius’ face, then nodded.

 

“If you are finished with Arthur, I require your presence in my chambers,” he said. Gaius bowed his head.

 

“Keep an eye on him,” he said to Merlin, before picking up his bag and following the king out of the room. 

Merlin sat down beside Arthur’s bed, staring at the prince’s golden head. Was this the way every other situation would have gone for Arthur, if he hadn’t been here? Would Arthur have returned to the castle bloody but alive after the confrontation with Nimueh, or after the fights with the numerous beasts that they’d faced over the years? It was terrible to think that he might have been killed in any of those instances, had Merlin not been there, but it was somehow worse to realise that he might not have – that Merlin was in Arthur’s way, and that Arthur would have won on his own and been stronger for it.

 

There were times when Merlin wondered how much of this world he’d changed. Times when he pushed past all the excuses he’d layered within his mind and saw the truth hiding beneath – that he’d done too much, that he’d shaped things, that if he ever got back home it’d be to a world where the book he’d loved had changed so much that he wouldn’t recognise it anymore. He wondered which was more important – the book he’d grown up relying on, or the experiences he’d had here. But both were a part of him now, he knew, and he couldn’t choose between them.

 

He took out the book sometimes and looked at it, holding it flat between his hands and feeling the comforting weight of its pages. He didn’t open it, partly because he didn’t want to remind himself of the fates of each of the people he’d met and touched and loved, but also because he was afraid. He was afraid that it might have changed, that the words he read would not be those he remembered, because then he’d know for certain that something had been lost forever. He hated the uncertainty of this place, but it was better than knowing for sure.

 

Merlin looked back down at the prince with a sigh. He looked tired, as though he hadn’t been sleeping properly for months. Merlin wondered whether there was something he hadn’t noticed, something that he was worrying about that Merlin hadn’t picked up on. His mouth was twisted down into a faint frown, even though he was asleep, and there was a tiny crease between his eyebrows. Merlin reached out a hand towards the prince, running the tip of his finger over the soft, crinkled skin, trying to smooth away Arthur’s frown.

 

“Merlin,” Arthur mumbled, rolling onto his back beneath the sheets. Merlin jerked his hand away, startled, but the man didn’t wake. Merlin waited a few seconds, until Arthur’s breathing had settled again, and then moved his hand to stroke down the side of Arthur’s face, just once, before he dropped it back into his lap. It gave him an odd, light feeling within his chest to hear Arthur say his name, even though it was probably just because the prince was dreaming of ordering him around.

 

“You’re going to be a great king one day, Arthur,” he said softly, and he found that, for the first time, he fully believed those words. He’d forgotten how he used to imagine King Arthur, back when he’d first arrived in Camelot, because somehow, in those tiny moments between the fighting and the arguing and the running about and saving the castle, he’d begun to notice that this Arthur could be great. He could be wonderful, even. He wasn’t as strong as Merlin had pictured King Arthur, but he had strength enough to force himself to keep going when everyone else had given up. He wasn’t as wise as Merlin had imagined the king to be, and nor was he as infallible, but he had wisdom enough to know how to care for his people, and he was as good as it was possible for a man to be. He wasn’t the king Merlin had dreamt of, but Merlin didn’t want that king anymore. What he wanted was Arthur, the Arthur who called him an idiot and stood up for his subjects and had proven himself to be the best man that Merlin had ever known. 

 

He stood up from the chair beside Arthur’s bed, tucking the prince’s sheets more tightly around his body, and then left the room quietly, pulling the door shut behind him.

 

***

 

Arthur, as it turned out, had run into a low-hanging branch while riding through the forest, which Merlin thought was unusual, because _he_ was usually the one doing things like that. Arthur assured the king when he awoke that he had nothing more than a bruise and that he would be fit for the tournament.

 

When Merlin walked into his chambers the next afternoon, Arthur kept his eyes averted from Merlin, his head tilted down and his hair shining deep gold in the sunlight. He held out his arms soundlessly for Merlin to begin putting on his armour and Merlin knew that something had changed in the way Arthur saw him. It was as though they were back to the way they'd been in his first few weeks at Camelot and that realisation, that the way he was had turned Arthur away from him, ached tight and cold within Merlin's chest.

 

***

 

His goodbye to Gwaine when Uther banished the man from the kingdom was a hard one. They spent the final night of Gwaine's stay curled together on Merlin's bed, with Merlin's head on Gwaine's chest and Gwaine's arms loose around his shoulders.

 

“You'll come back,” Merlin whispered to the man after he'd blown out the candle and they were lying warm and wrapped together in the dark. Merlin knew Gwaine _would_ come back, only it would be too late for Merlin, because he would be back in his own world long before Arthur became king of this one.

 

“I will,” Gwaine said, tightening his arms around Merlin's body. “The taverns here are too good to miss.”

 

Merlin snuffed a laugh. “I'll miss you,” he said quietly. He hadn't had anyone he could talk to – really talk to, like he had with Will – since Lancelot left, because Gwen was always busy with Morgana's chores and Arthur was… well, he was _Arthur,_ and he was barely talking to Merlin at all anymore.

 

Gwaine hummed, running a hand down Merlin's arm.

 

“You'll have Arthur,” he said, and Merlin let his eyes drift closed without reply, because he didn't know how to explain to Gwaine that no, he wouldn't have Arthur. That wasn't the way that things turned out.

 

***

 

The months passed quickly after that, and somewhere between autumn and winter Gaius stopped pulling out new books from the secret, hidden places in his chambers and started going through the old ones again, reading over the familiar words as though they might suddenly give him the right spell. He’d begun to try and get Merlin to cast them, too, and there were long hours in the evenings when Merlin would stand reading strings of strange words, both hoping and dreading that they’d be the ones which could lift him up from this time and send him home.

 

They never were, though, and at the end of each night Merlin would put aside the book with a faint sense of relief, because despite the fact that he knew this world was not his, he still found that he didn’t want to leave it. He’d grown to like it here – he liked the way he knew how to be around Arthur now, and he liked the way he lived here. It was a simple existence, but one that was filled with things that Merlin had never had before, and things that he hadn’t known he’d wanted. It felt like his life, even if it wasn’t supposed to.

Things weren’t always easy, though. There were days when death hung over the castle and Merlin saw fear in the faces of the townspeople. There were days when Merlin could feel their lives brushing along the lines of the legend, pushing ever closer to the point when Arthur’s world as Merlin knew it would begin.

 

There were times when Merlin could not even begin to understand how they could possibly get through this, when he could see the dust falling from the roof of the castle and he was reminded that this, too, would fall. This castle did not exist within Merlin’s life. The people within it would not live to see all that Merlin had seen. He knew two centuries, separated by an abyss of time, whereas they knew only one. They did not know that this would end, that their houses would crumble and their names would be forgotten and their graves would be lost. Merlin knew, and oh, it scared him sometimes.

 

There were moments, too, when Merlin let the legend slip out of his sight, like in the weeks after Gwaine left. He came across the caves, shining and glassy-walled, when Arthur had fallen beneath the arrows of bandits. The crystals spoke to him of a future he did not understand, one that he knew was not _the_ future, but perhaps one that could still come to pass. Morgana could not kill Uther, of course, and she could not reign upon the throne of Camelot for all the years of her life, because Arthur was destined for that.

 

And yet – and yet. Those half-glimpsed, burning images, pressed into the folds of his mind while he stood within the caves, stayed with him long after he’d pulled Arthur onto his horse and galloped back through the trees towards Camelot.

 

“They seemed so real,” he told Gaius, after Arthur had fallen asleep.

 

Gaius frowned at him, his brows raised high upon his forehead.“They may not come to pass,” he said. “You can’t predict the future, Merlin, you can only guess at the path it will take.”

 

Merlin sat down at the table and filled his mouth with chicken to stop himself from replying.

 

Later that night he found himself trying to fix things anyway, because those visions mixed themselves up with his knowledge of what was supposed to happen and what already had, until he couldn’t tell what he was meant to avoid doing and how he was supposed to do it.

 

He followed Morgana out through the passages of the castle and then, when she reached the final door, he struck out with his magic, a deep flood of power that sent her tumbling through the air in a burst of red and gold. It was not until he saw her crumpled at the foot of the stairs that he realised, with a sickening, sinking feeling, that perhaps he’d gone too far, this time.

 

And then he needed to save her, to return everything to the way that it was supposed to be, even though the dragon did not want it to be so. It was _his_ fault that she was lying in Gaius’ rooms with her face pale and her body motionless. He wasn’t supposed to have interfered, but he had.

 

It was the way things happened sometimes – like that time months before when he’d poisoned Morgana, when he’d thought that it was the only way to make sure that things played out in the way that they were supposed to. He found that more and more, he was so focused on saving Arthur that he forgot that there were other people in the book too. Half the time he only remembered too late that, if he was going to be saving Arthur, he would also have to try and save everyone else, because he didn’t know how many other lives were hooked into the huge, tangled knot of the legend. He didn’t know who counted.

 

***

 

Gwaine’s exile was hard. Merlin saw him a few times – on the quest to find the Fisher King, when they’d huddled around the fire in the Perilous Lands with their hands clasped together and thought about Arthur, somewhere out there ahead of them in the darkness, and later on, when they’d saved the kingdom from Morgana. He was thrilled when it became apparent that both Gwaine and Lancelot weren’t planning to leave again.

 

Merlin had missed them both – he’d missed Lancelot’s easy smile and the way that Gwaine would laugh off trouble - the way he would never stop to think about anything before he did it. He liked them; they were friends and they gave Merlin something in his life that didn’t revolve around Arthur. He knew that both Lancelot and Gwaine would be Arthur’s bravest, strongest knights one day, but for now they were just two men skirting around the edges of their destiny. Merlin could understand that.

 

The winter, when it came, pressed quickly down upon the castle. By the time the frost had truly set in, Merlin found that the world was far, far too cold. The snow dropped down from the sky as though it had been building up to it all summer and Merlin would walk through the town with three shirts on, his neckerchief wrapped tight around his throat and his face screwed up against the icy air. He would arrive in Arthur’s chambers each morning with his arms full of firewood and his clothes dripping, and would stand with his numb fingers held out to the flames until they were bright pink with the heat.

 

“You’re dripping on the floor,” Arthur commented as he strode into the room, leaving a trail of discarded clothing behind him. Merlin turned to stare at him, feeling oddly warm.

 

“You do know that it’s _winter,_ Arthur,” he said. Arthur was picking up the first pieces of his armour and motioning at Merlin to come and help him put them on.

 

“And I suppose you think that Camelot isn’t going to get attacked in winter,” Arthur said dryly. But it was true – they hadn’t been attacked in an entire month and it was unsettling. Merlin still felt on edge, because they’d had to fight off some enemy at least once a week before now and he wasn’t used to all this _calm_. He often caught Arthur fidgeting over his meal, or after he’d had meetings with Uther, so he supposed that the prince wasn’t used to it yet, either.

 

Merlin took the chainmail off the table, feeling the metal bite cold against his fingers as he pushed it over Arthur’s head. Arthur had been like this all winter, focused in a way that Merlin couldn’t understand, as though he was waiting for something to happen, or trying to take his mind off something. He looked into Arthur’s face as he clasped the buckles of his chestpiece, wondering what it could be. Arthur had his eyes fixed on the far wall, his eyes almost grey in the shadowy, flickering light of the room. His jaw was set firmly and he wasn’t acknowledging Merlin’s presence – Merlin’s hands on his neck as he adjusted the chainmail, or Merlin’s fingers brushing over the line of his shoulder as he made sure the armour was sitting right. It was odd, because Merlin thought that they’d passed the point where Arthur _cared_ about what he’d seen Merlin and Gwaine doing in the passageway. Arthur had been indifferent, he’d been angry, he’d insulted Merlin, but he’d never just ignored Merlin’s presence like this. Merlin had endured months of Arthur’s sullenness and his irritation – of Arthur sending him out twice a day to clean the stables and forcing him to make the prince’s bed three times over, because it was ‘not quite perfect, Merlin.’ It had been a little better when Gwaine had left, because even though Merlin had felt unbearably lonely for the first few days, Arthur stopped looking like he wanted to kill Merlin whenever he saw him, which had been nice for the few weeks that it lasted.

 

He had thought that they were finished with that, though. Several times now, he’d noticed Arthur looking at him when he was sitting on the prince’s floor polishing his armour, and it hadn’t been with the half-exasperated look he usually wore. Arthur had even _smiled_ at him when he’d brought up the man’s supper just last week. He thought they’d reached some sort of an agreement, albeit one where Merlin still did far too many chores and Arthur was still oddly focused on training. But now, Arthur was staring at the opposite wall of the room like he wanted nothing more than for it to fall on top of the both of them, and Merlin couldn’t work out why.

 

“Is something wrong?” he asked as he handed the prince the leather gloves he usually used in training.

 

Arthur kept his eyes fixed on the far wall, as though he hadn’t heard Merlin speak at all. Merlin paused for a second and then lifted up a hand, waving it in front of Arthur’s face.

 

“What?” Arthur said, his eyes flicking to Merlin’s hand.

 

“Is there something wrong?” Merlin asked again, putting down the glove he’d been holding and stepping closer to Arthur, looking into his face, trying to understand. “There must be. You’ve been acting weird for months now.”

 

Arthur frowned, his gaze drifting back towards the opposite wall of the chambers. “I am perfectly fine, Merlin,” he said.

 

“You’re _not_ fine,” Merlin said with a touch of annoyance. “I’ve seen homeless people who were more fine than you, Arthur. You’re going out to train your men in the snow, you’re even more grumpy than usual –“ Arthur frowned at that, “-and for god’s sakes, Arthur, _why won’t you look at me?”_

 

Arthur did look at him then, his gaze settling hot on Merlin’s face. He had an odd expression on his face, and Merlin could feel something cold radiating off him as Merlin spoke.

 

“If it’s about Gwaine,” he said softly, “we’re not – it’s not – it was just one time, and he’s still a good knight, Arthur. It’s just the way we are. It doesn’t make us bad people.” Merlin swallowed. He didn’t know why he’d brought that up; he hadn’t meant to have this conversation, not now, not with Arthur, because he knew the way it went. He didn’t want to lose Arthur. 

 

“I thought –“ he shook his head. “I thought that you, of all people, would understand that.”

 

Arthur stared at him, eyes wide and jaw clenched. “What is that supposed to mean?” he said slowly.

 

“It means that you’re _Prince Arthur,_ ” Merlin said. “That you’re a good prince and that you’re going to be a great king, someday. The best of kings. It means that the Arthur I know doesn’t judge people for how they are born.” He stared back at the prince, resisting the urge to lower his gaze. Arthur stood motionless for a second, as though Merlin’s words had frozen him, and then he stepped away from Merlin and walked out of the door of his chambers, his armour still unfastened on one side.

 

Merlin leant against the table as soon as Arthur had left, his heart thudding out an uneven rhythm within his chest. He could feel the slow burn of something - shame, or betrayal, or some combination of the two - sparking to life within his veins and he bit down hard on his lip to stop himself from crying. He shouldn’t have said anything. He’d known that Arthur didn’t have to accept this, that there was no indication in the legend that he’d ever needed to accept it. Merlin had simply thought that Arthur was a good enough person that he _would_ , but he’d just stared at Merlin and then walked out of the room. But Arthur had left, and Merlin was certain that whatever friendship he’d had with Arthur before now, delicate though it was, had left with him.

 

He recognised the feeling burning through his chest now. It was the way he felt when he saw Will with someone, because Will didn’t seem to care how it would end up. Will had only ever looked at the present, whereas Merlin could see all of the past, and now, with Arthur, he could see the future. He knew where it would end and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he had to spend every single day around Arthur with the knowledge that Arthur was never going to accept him, and he was _never_ going to love him. It wasn’t a vague suspicion, but the solid truth. He’d read the book. There was no Merlin in it.

 

It wasn’t fair that he had met the man he’d been dreaming of all his life, the only man who could punch through his chest with one smile and make Merlin want to hold onto him forever, and yet he couldn’t be with him. Arthur could barely even look at him anymore. Fuck destiny, Merlin thought. Destiny wasn’t good enough.

 

He pressed one hand against the table, head aching, and felt the tip of his finger brush against something soft. He looked down, confused, and realised that Arthur’s glove was still lying on the wood beside him. Merlin picked it up, turning it over in his hands. He should take it down to the prince, because he was still Arthur’s manservant, even if he’d ruined all chance of ever being anything else.

 

The castle seemed darker than usual when he walked through it. Merlin’s steps echoed off the stone, and there were no maids walking through the passageways. They were probably all huddled around the fires Merlin had seen lit in the kitchens. Merlin wondered briefly if Gwen was among them, her hands outstretched to the flames, with the other servants clustered tight around her, all of them completely unaware of the future. It was lonely, knowing what Merlin knew.

 

Merlin walked out into the courtyard, his head bowed against the icy wind. There was a light coat of snow on the ground and it was stupid for Arthur to be out in this. He hoped that Leon had talked Arthur out of training today, but he knew that if Arthur was angry there wouldn’t be much that any of the knights could do to dissuade him. He pushed on through the cold, walking quickly across the courtyard and out of the gate. The guards huddled around the fire beneath the stone arch barely looked at him as he passed.

 

The field was only a short walk from the castle, five minutes or so, but with the wind whipping beneath his neckerchief and the snow soaking through the thin soles of his boots, it felt like it took hours. Merlin was shivering by the time he reached the gate. He was so focused on getting his stiff fingers to open it that he didn’t notice the field was empty until he was standing in it.

 

He looked around the snow-covered grass in surprise, fighting the urge to laugh. He must look ridiculous, standing in thin clothes in an empty field in the middle of winter, with his limbs half-frozen and his hand clenched tightly around the prince’s glove. He hugged his arms to his chest, trying to warm them, and felt a sudden wave of homesickness. He was sick of this place. He was sick of never knowing what to do, and he was cold and tired and he’d had his emotions battered about more often than he could stand. He wanted his mother; he wanted Will; he wanted to be warm and safe and to not have to worry about everything he said.

 

He felt like he was breaking in two, and it _hurt_. It hurt every single day he looked at Arthur and realised that he couldn’t have him. It hurt every single day he saw Morgana, because he knew that she wouldn’t ever again be that girl she’d been when he first arrived in Camelot. It hurt when he saw Lancelot, because he would never be able to have Gwen wholly to himself, and when he saw Gwen, because she would never find a way to love both of her men without breaking one of their hearts.

 

He didn’t want to see the legend come into being, he realised, because the legend wasn’t what he wanted anymore. _Don’t cry,_ he told himself fiercely, biting down hard on his bottom lip. He felt the same way he did on the day after his tenth birthday, when he’d come out into the kitchen and seen his birthday balloons half-deflated on the kitchen floor. He’d been so disappointed then, because all of the excitement was gone, and all that was left was a squishy sphere of red rubber and the feeling  that everything he’d looked forward to was over, and the world was a little bit colder because of it.

 

It started to rain as he turned back towards the castle, a heavy, icy sheet of water that poured down from the sky and soaked through Merlin’s clothes in an instant. He held Arthur’s glove balled up to his chest, sheltering it from the rain, but by the time he’d climbed the castle steps it was soggy and dripping.

 

He walked back through the castle towards Arthur’s chambers, leaving a trail of water all along the passageway from his dripping clothes. The prince wasn’t in his room when Merlin walked through the door. He stood staring around the empty chambers for a moment, before moving over towards the fireplace and kneeling in front of it. He set the glove down on the hearth beside him, and it was stupid, it was just a glove, but being Arthur’s manservant was all Merlin had left and he was going to do it as best he could.

 

He ran a hand miserably through his dripping hair, trying to dry it off. The flames from the fire were hot against his face as he lay down on his side with his back to the fireplace. He would just stay here a moment, until his clothes were dry, because his other set were still filthy from when he’d had to muck out the stables in them earlier that week and Gaius’ room didn’t have a fire. It wouldn’t take long, he knew. He’d dried his clothes in front of Arthur’s fire before, warming his rain-soaked body while he was waiting for Arthur to get back from training or meetings with Uther.

 

He closed his eyes, feeling the warmth spreading slowly though his body, drying his clothes and his hair until he felt almost too hot, burnt at the edges, his cheeks hot and his throat dry. Swallowing, he curled his arms around his knees, trying to hold himself in place, because he hadn’t realised that he was shaking but it was either that or the room was, and Merlin didn’t really think that the second one was all that likely.

 

The minutes ticked by, each one painfully slow as Merlin waited for his body to warm up. He could feel his mind drifting away from consciousness, slipping into sleep even as he tried to stop it. He needed to get up; he knew Arthur would have him thrown in the dungeons if he found Merlin sleeping on his floor, and the prince could be back at any second. He tried to sit up, but his limbs felt far too heavy and he couldn’t seem to get them to move. Arthur isn’t going to be happy _,_ Merlin thought, and then he didn’t think anymore and his mind dropped into darkness.

 

***

 

His dreams were strange. They seemed almost real; he dreamt of waking with his head fuzzy and pounding, but the room was turning wide and gold around him, and Arthur was there with his arms around Merlin’s body and his blue eyes worried as they looked into Merlin’s face, and Merlin was torn between panic, because Arthur shouldn’t be worried, and a tiny, bubbling sense of happiness, because Arthur was looking at him, not through him or at the wall behind him or at his feet. He dissolved into darkness when Merlin tried to focus on him, though, and then all he dreamt of was a parade of faces – Gaius’, peering down at him, and Gwen’s, and – briefly – Morgana’s, but it was the Morgana that Merlin remembered from his first days at Camelot. He saw Gwaine, too, and he felt as though his mind was burning up, turning through all the people he knew. He tried to hold on to their faces as they swirled above him, because he felt as though he was about to forget them and he didn’t want to let them go.

 

He dreamt of Gaius bent over his body, pressing something cool against his lips, and then he was talking, a stream of words that flowed from somewhere inside him, even though he knew he wasn’t supposed to say them out loud. _Home_ , he told Gaius. _I want to go home._ But Gaius simply pressed a hand to his forehead and stayed silent.

 

And throughout it all was Arthur, his golden face in the corner of Merlin’s dreams, his hand clasping Merlin’s when all the faces had swirled back into the darkness, his voice soft in Merlin’s ear, whispering things that Merlin couldn’t quite understand, things that made the roar of blood in his ears fade a little and the thudding ache of his head seem a little less painful. Arthur had his fingers tangled in Merlin’s hair, his gaze steady on Merlin’s face, until Merlin began to feel that this was a dream he could live with, one that he wouldn’t mind slipping into for the rest of eternity.

 

There were moments, too, when Merlin could feel his magic drifting though his body, floating over the surface of his skin like it wanted to break free, only he couldn’t understand why. It pressed into the centre of his mind, and he could see his mother, her face pale and weary, smiling at someone Merlin couldn’t quite see. There was Will, too, walking along the street with his hands in his pockets and his head bent against the wind. The streets were drained of colour, all grey and dark, and Merlin couldn’t tell whether it was just because of his dream, or if they’d always been like that and he hadn’t noticed until now. It was odd to think that he’d changed so much that he could barely recognise his own town. He would have felt panicked if not for Arthur’s hand on his, his fingers wrapped tight around Merlin’s own, as though he wasn’t ever going to let go.

 

He drifted again after that, his body heavy and hot and his mind fuzzy. There was something important about where he was, he knew, something he was supposed to remember, but every time he got close to it his mind slipped back into the darkness again.

 

***

 

Merlin woke to find sunlight streaming through the window, pouring across the blankets and warming his face. His limbs felt heavy, like he’d been asleep for far longer than he’d intended. The sun was higher in the sky than it usually was when he woke. He pushed back the blankets, sitting up, but paused as he realised that – as far as he could remember – he hadn’t been in bed when he’d fallen asleep, and he certainly hadn’t been in _Arthur’s_ bed.

 

He paused for a second, confused, and then scrambled out of it. What was he doing in Arthur’s bed? Looking down at himself, he realised that his boots and his belt and his jacket were missing, and that the tunic he was wearing wasn’t his own. He was in Arthur’s clothes, in Arthur’s bed, with his head aching and none of this was making any sense. Arthur wasn’t around and Merlin wondered why no one had woken him up. The prince wasn’t the sort of person who would take very kindly to finding other people asleep in his bed.

 

He took one last look around the room and then walked towards the door, the stone cold against his bare feet. He’d just go to Gaius’ chambers, he decided, and ask the man what on earth was –

 

Merlin’s train of thought broke suddenly off as he walked through the door and straight into Arthur. He reeled backwards, arms flailing wildly and ended up collapsing in a painful, undignified heap at Arthur’s feet.

 

“ _Mer_ lin _,_ you idiot,” the prince said, staring down at him. “What are you doing up?” Merlin blinked at him, holding a hand to his pounding head as he tried to get his feet back under him.

 

“What?”

 

Arthur made a face, like he thought Merlin was being even more idiotic than usual, and then reached down and pulled Merlin upright by his tunic, tugging until it was rucked halfway up his body and Merlin could feel the air blowing cold around his hips. He squawked in protest, but the prince didn’t let go, instead marching him back over towards Arthur’s bed with his hands clasped over Merlin’s shoulders. Merlin felt his breath hitch at the feel of Arthur’s hands strong against him, and he twisted frantically free of the man’s grip, stepping backwards so that Arthur couldn’t grab him again.

 

“ _Merlin,_ ” Arthur said in annoyance. “What on earth has got into you?”

 

Merlin looked from Arthur to the bed and back again, his heart thudding wildly within his chest. He didn’t – Arthur was trying to get him into Arthur’s bed. He’d _woken up_ in Arthur’s bed. Something was very wrong here, but he couldn’t work out exactly what it was, because his brain had sort of seized up the moment Arthur had grabbed him.

 

“I-“ Merlin started, then stopped, unsure of what to say. Arthur stared at him for a second, waiting for him to continue, and then he seemed to notice that Merlin was still barefoot and beltless and that his tunic – Arthur’s tunic, Merlin corrected himself, though he still wasn’t sure why he was wearing that – was sitting so far askew that it was hanging off Merlin’s shoulder. His gaze slid slowly over Merlin’s body, an odd expression flicking onto his face, and Merlin winced. He must look a mess.

 

There was a moment of silence as Arthur eyed Merlin’s clothes and Merlin tried to get his thoughts into some sort of order. He took a deep breath, Arthur’s eyes flicking to his chest as he did so, and then he seemed to realise that he was staring and looked quickly away, scowling.

 

“Would you just get back into bed, Merlin?” he said shortly.

 

Merlin looked miserably from Arthur to the bed, his head pounding again. “Did we – why am I meant to be getting into your bed?” he asked slowly.

 

Arthur raised an eyebrow. “Because it’s better than yours, and the better rest you get the sooner you’ll be well. I’ve just had Gareth trying to get my armour off and he’s even more incompetent than you.”

 

“But I’m not sick,” Merlin said slowly, staring at him. Apart from his headache, he felt fine.

 

“Merlin, you’ve been asleep for the past two days. You fainted on my floor.”

 

“Oh.” Merlin considered that. “So we didn’t –“ he broke off.

 

“We didn’t what?” Arthur asked, narrowing his eyes.

 

“Nothing,” Merlin said quickly, but Arthur stepped closer, his gaze fixed hard on Merlin’s face. “We didn’t _what,_ Merlin?”

 

Merlin swallowed. “It’s just,“ he started. He had a feeling that he wasn’t quite as well as he originally thought, because his brain seemed to have stopped filtering everything that was coming out of his mouth.

 

“I thought, because there was you, and the bed, and I was wearing this,” he pulled at Arthur’s tunic, causing

it to slip further off his shoulder than it had been before, “that we might have, you know.”

 

There was a long pause as Arthur tried to work out what it was that Merlin was saying. Merlin watched him, the way his eyebrows were tugged down low on his forehead in confusion, the way the sunlight brushed through the ends of his hair. He could see the exact moment when Arthur realised what Merlin had meant, because the man’s eyes widened and something in his jaw tightened.

 

“You thought we –“ he started incredulously. “You thought that I would –“

 

Merlin felt the unsaid end of that sentence cut through him like a sword. He knew what Arthur meant, that the idea of him being with Merlin was something unthinkable. He’d known that the prince felt like that all along, but it still hurt to hear it.

 

“Right,” he said quietly. “Sorry. That was stupid.” He turned towards the door, rejection washing hard through him, but Arthur grabbed his arm before he could leave.

 

“No,” he said firmly, and Merlin turned back to look at him. “You need to hear this.” The prince looked uncomfortable, but there was a determined expression on his face, as though he’d decided what to say and he was going to see it through until the end.

 

“I would never do that,” he said, his grip tightening on Merlin’s arm. “I know that some nobles do, but haven’t, and I wouldn’t, Merlin. Not to you. Not to _any_ of the servants.”

 

Merlin stared at him. Of all the things that Arthur could have said, that was the last one he’d been expecting. It shouldn’t have been, though, because Merlin should have realised that Arthur would bring his own honour into this. Merlin felt irritation sparking through his veins.

 

“You think that I would _let_ you?” he said indignantly. “That you could just, what, take me?” he paused as another thought came to him. “Is that what you think happened with Gwaine?” Arthur’s eyes widened, and Merlin felt a wave of anger sweep through him. He wrenched his arm back towards his body, trying to pull his wrist free.

 

“God, Arthur, you ass. You have _no idea_ ,” he snapped. “I would never let anyone near me if I didn’t want them there. I’m not – this is the way I am, Arthur. It’s not because I’m a servant. It’s not because I want to please anyone. If I was with you, it would be because I wanted to be, Arthur, not because you ordered me to.” Arthur froze, his fingers loosening slightly on Merlin’s wrist.

 

“You want to be?” he asked, and there was something fragile in his face in that moment, a look that Merlin wanted to capture and keep forever, because he’d never seen Arthur like that before, with his blue gaze resting uncertainly on Merlin’s face and his voice soft and low. 

 

And then Merlin realised what Arthur was asking – that he’d seized onto what Merlin had implied rather than what he’d said - and he realised that he couldn’t lie to the prince, not now. Not when Arthur was staring at him like that, with his hand warm on Merlin’s wrist and his jaw tight, as though he was waiting for Merlin to say no. As though he was expecting Merlin to.

 

But Merlin wasn’t strong enough for that. He couldn’t be that person, the one who pushed away everyone and everything, so that things could stay the way they were supposed to be. He was selfish and he wasn’t brave enough and he had always wanted Arthur, always, even when he didn’t know that Arthur had existed outside of those stupid pages.

 

No, he thought. He should say no. _No, Arthur, I’ve never wanted that and I never will._ That’s what he should say.

 

He nodded.

 

Arthur was silent for a moment, staring at him. Merlin shifted beneath his gaze, feeling his heart thudding hard within his chest and uncertainty creeping into the corners of his mind. Perhaps Arthur hadn’t meant what Merlin thought he’d meant, at all.

 

“Arthur, I –“ he started, and then Arthur tightened his hand on Merlin’s wrist and pulled him forward, until they were standing almost chest to chest and Merlin could see the tiny lines running over the prince’s lips and the way his blonde eyelashes swept the tops of his cheeks as he blinked. 

 

“Idiot,” he said, and then leant in and pressed his lips against Merlin’s. 

 

It wasn’t, Merlin thought later, how he had imagined it would go. He’d imagined them both to be – not strong, exactly, but firm, sure of what they were doing and of what they wanted. He’d thought Arthur would be different. He’d thought that _he_ would be different, because he was silly and skinny and out of place, and the Merlin he’d imagined with Arthur had been so much better than he could ever be.

 

But this Arthur wasn’t the Arthur he’d imagined, either. This Arthur had his fingers pressed into the pale skin of Merlin’s waist and his mouth open against Merlin’s, his tongue swiping hot across Merlin’s lips in a way that made Merlin cling to him, like he couldn’t remember how to stand. This Arthur was an idiot and an ass, but he was the only Arthur there was and the only Arthur worth having.

 

So Merlin forgot about all those scenes he’d imagined. He forgot about the book and the legend and Arthur’s big, wide-arcing destiny, just for a moment, because they weren’t what he wanted right now. Right now there was just Arthur, his skin soft beneath Merlin’s hands and his fingers warm as he slipped them beneath the hem of Merlin’s tunic. Merlin opened his mouth beneath Arthur’s, letting Arthur slide his tongue slick and hot against Merlin’s own. He tangled his fingers into Arthur’s hair, tugging a little too hard, and Arthur gave a tiny, hitching gasp at the movement and caught Merlin’s bottom lip lightly between his teeth.

 

Merlin jerked his hips, hands sliding down to clutch at the base of Arthur’s spine, with desire flooding hot through his veins. He could feel the cool, rough press of stone against his back and he realised that Arthur had pushed him against the wall. His hands were tugging at Merlin’s tunic and he growled with frustration when it got stuck around Merlin’s chest.

 

“Impressive, sire,” Merlin whispered, half-mocking, his lips brushing against the shell of Arthur’s ear. Arthur leaned back and frowned at him, his eyes startlingly blue as he fixed them on Merlin’s face.

 

“Shirt,” he said, voice low and husky. “Off, Merlin. _Now_.” He trailed his fingers down Merlin’s side and Merlin shivered, pulling off his tunic in a jerky, uncoordinated movement and tossing it to the floor. Arthur stared down at Merlin’s chest, his gaze hot against Merlin’s skin, and _god_ , Arthur was looking at him like he wanted to do everything that could be done between two men, everything that Merlin could imagine, only he didn’t quite know how to start.

 

Merlin pulled Arthur back in towards him and slid his hand down to the front of Arthur’s breeches, palming him through the fabric and pressing open-mouthed, filthy kisses against Arthur’s mouth. He could feel the moment when, whatever final bit of control Arthur was trying to hold onto, snapped and he curved around Merlin, rutting up against him, his mouth slipping from Merlin’s own down to the side of Merlin’s neck. Merlin could hear him panting open-mouthed, with every thrust, and the sound was burning fiery through his chest and flooding his belly with heat. _God_ , he could feel Arthur against him, the prince’s cock hard through the thin fabric of his breeches and his chest flush against Merlin’s. It was better than anything Merlin had felt, better than anything he’d imagined, because this time it wasn’t just his own fingers and hands and imagination, but _Arthur,_ real and solid and rocking hard against him with his red lips parted and his fingers tight on Merlin’s waist.

 

Merlin groaned, sliding a knee between Arthur’s legs and dipping his fingers under the band of Arthur’s breeches, so that he could feel the round, tight curve of Arthur beneath his hands, pulling the man in towards him until they were pressed as close together as it was possible for two people to be.

 

Merlin wanted – he wanted _this_ , but also more – he wanted Arthur around him, wanted the prince above him, pushing hard into his body, wanted to take the man apart with his fingers and his mouth until Arthur had forgotten what it was like to do anything else but writhe, gasping and needy, beneath Merlin’s touch. And somewhere beneath that, swirling deep beneath his desire, there were more – a whole lifetime’s worth of things that he wanted to do to Arthur, only they would have to wait, because this time Merlin simply wasn’t going to last.

 

He kneaded Arthur’s skin with his fingertips, hooking one leg around the prince and tipping his head back, so that it thunked hard against the wall. The sharp, sudden feel of it was a point of pain that focused him, drew him back from the edge for long enough that he could look down and see Arthur, his cheeks flushed with colour and his mouth open as he rutted in against Merlin, filthy and raw.

 

Merlin slid a hand around to the front of Arthur’s breeches and tugged at the laces there, pulling at them with frustrated movements until they were loose enough that Merlin could pull Arthur’s cock free and press it hot against his own, one hand wrapped tight around the both of them.

 

Arthur swallowed down a groan, pupils blown wide and eyes flicking down to stare at the place where Merlin was holding them together.

 

“Gods, Merlin, you –“ he said, voice raspy, broken, and then Merlin stroked his hand over them both and it was almost too rough, the angle was wrong, his head was still pressed hard against the rough stone of the wall, but _fuck_ ,  it was perfect, the way Arthur was pushing up into his hand and moaning. There were tiny gasps ripping from his throat, and his golden-skinned shoulders were tight, his forehead beaded with sweat and his lips a deep, bitten red.

 

“ _Arthur_ ,” Merlin managed, and Arthur’s eyes flicked suddenly back to his own, deep blue and framed by clumped-together, gold lashes. Merlin could see the moment Arthur hit that point, slipped over the edge, because his eyes fluttered closed and his breathing hitched and Merlin could _feel_ Arthur’s release rolling through him in the way that he clutched his hands tight around Merlin’s waist and the way that he jerked beneath Merlin’s fingers.

 

Merlin gasped, pleasure flooding hot through his insides, and came with his fingers skidding over Arthur’s cock and his teeth sinking hard into his bottom lip, his senses narrowing down around it until all he could see was the hard line of Arthur’s shoulder and all he could feel was the hot, wet rush of release and the wicked, bruise-hard clamp of Arthur’s fingers against his skin.

 

He came back slowly, in pieces, his mind hazy with pleasure and his arms loose around Arthur’s waist. He felt odd, stretched out at the core, as though Arthur had wrung something from within him that Merlin had never expected anyone to take. 

 

Arthur was still firm against him, and Merlin tilted his head down and pressed a kiss to the man’s shoulder.

 

“Arthur?” he said, suddenly uncertain, unsure whether Arthur would want him to leave, whether that was all that he needed from Merlin.

 

Arthur looked up at him, hair sticking out on one side and lips swollen and red. “I think,” he said, in a low, raw voice that sent shivers down Merlin’s spine, “that you should stay here tonight. You are clearly not well enough to leave my chambers.”

 

And for once, Merlin didn’t argue.

 

***

 

Merlin woke the next morning to find Arthur pressed face-down into the pillows beside him. The sheets were bunched low around his waist, exposing the long, golden line of his back, and his limbs were spread wide as though he wasn't used to sleeping with another person in his bed.

 

In his bed. Merlin turned the phrase over in his mind, thinking. He was in Arthur's bed, with the prince's arm draped over his waist. He felt a surge of swift panic at that, because he didn't know, he didn't want to know what this would do to everything, to Arthur, to the legend, if it would change everything or nothing at all. If it _meant_ everything or nothing at all.

 

“Stop it,” Arthur mumbled, rolling over onto his side and cracking open an eye. Merlin froze.

“Stop what?” he asked carefully.

 

“Stop _thinking,_ Merlin, it doesn't suit you.” Arthur shut his eyes again with a smirk. Merlin aimed a kick at him under the sheets, which would have worked better if he hadn't gotten his legs hopelessly tangled.

 

“You're still a prat,” Merlin said.

 

“And I can still put you in the stocks for saying that,” Arthur replied, but there was a smile on his face as he said it and his fingers were running along Merlin's side, brushing from his shoulder down to the angled curve of his hip and back again.

 

And so Merlin didn't think any more about it that day. Instead, he curled closer to the prince, ignoring Arthur's half-hearted mumble of complaint, and lay with his head on Arthur's chest for a few more minutes before Arthur had to get up for morning council with the nobles and Merlin had to go and explain to Gaius why he hadn't come home last night.

 

“Just tell him that you got locked in the stables again,” Arthur smirked as Merlin helped him to put on his armour.

 

“That was one time,” Merlin protested. “And I got out in the end.” He'd only been stuck in there because there was a fay between him and the door, but he hadn't mentioned that to Arthur.

 

He did up the buckles on the chest plate, brushing his fingers over the smooth skin between Arthur's neck and his shoulder. Arthur's eyes flickered shut for a moment and Merlin stepped forward, dropping his hand to Arthur's waist and pulling the prince closer, his fingers hooked tight around the links of Arthur's chainmail. It was an awkward sort of a hug at first, because Arthur was coated in metal and standing stiff in Merlin's arms, but Merlin wrapped himself around the prince anyway, his chin resting on Arthur's shoulder until he felt Arthur relax and slide his own arms around Merlin.

 

Merlin thought that he had never loved anyone quite as much as he did Arthur in that moment. It was as though he could feel Arthur tearing down the final barrier that he'd put around himself, the closest one and the one that he'd kept sealed the longest. It was a barrier most people didn't have – Gwaine didn't, he himself didn't – but it was also one that Merlin had never thought he'd be able to get through.

 

But somehow, at that moment, with the sound of the maids walking briskly along the passageway outside and the early morning sun shining through the window, Arthur seemed to have discovered that he didn't need to keep everyone out, not all the time. That sometimes he could stand in the arms of his manservant and the world wouldn't come crashing down around him.

 

It couldn't last, said the tiny voice in the back of Merlin's mind. Merlin would happily give up whatever destiny he had for a lifetime with the prince, but he couldn't give up Arthur's.

 

But perhaps, Merlin thought, this was what was supposed to happen. Not Merlin being here, exactly, but _someone_ being here. Perhaps Arthur had needed to learn how to open up that tiny, hidden part of himself before he could let Gwen in, and Merlin had pushed out some other person for this part in the legend. It wasn't the part he wanted to play – it was one that could have gone to anyone, a formless, interchangeable role, but it was the only one that Merlin knew he could ever hope to get, and he would hold tight to it for as long as he was able.

 

***

 

Neither Arthur nor Merlin told anyone over the next few weeks that they'd moved from being prince and servant to something more. It wasn't something that Merlin needed to share, and it was safer if they kept it hidden, anyway.

 

Gwaine found out two days after they'd first slept together, though, because he was Gwaine and he had some sort of a sixth sense for those sorts of things. He tackled Merlin about it when Arthur was down at the training fields practicing his swordwork with Leon.

 

“You did it,” he said, dragging Merlin into one of the alcoves of the passageway. Merlin stared at him.

 

“I did what?” he asked, even though he had a suspicious feeling that he knew exactly what Gwaine was talking about.

 

Gwaine made a gesture that Merlin thought it best not to try and interpret. “You know, with Arthur,” he grinned.

 

“How do you know?” Merlin asked. He didn't think that Arthur would have told.

 

Gwaine wrapped an arm around Merlin's shoulder. “Arthur's been almost pleasant and you've been grinning for the past two days, Merlin,” he said. “I know how to put things together.”

 

Merlin scowled. “It's nothing,” he said, even though it wasn't to him. But Arthur wouldn't see it that way. Arthur _couldn't_ see it that way.

 

Gwaine patted him on the shoulder. “Of course it is,” he replied in a tone that suggested he thought it was a lot more than that, then he let go of Merlin, winked, and walked off down the passage before Merlin could convince him that it really _was_ nothing.

 

***

 

One morning towards the end of winter, when the weather seemed to have decided that it was ready for spring and had produced a week of warmer days, Arthur came down into Gaius’ chambers while Merlin was helping the old man to clean out his old potion bottles. Merlin was sitting on the floor, with dirt streaked over his face and some unknown, filthy black liquid smeared over his fingers.

 

“Merlin,” Arthur started brusquely, then stopped and stared at Merlin’s hands. “What is _that_?”

 

“I don’t know,” Merlin said, staring miserably down at them. “It came from in there.” He nodded at the cupboard in front of him and Arthur made a face.

 

“I need you to meet me at the stables in ten minutes,” he said. “Tell Gaius it’s something urgent, and for gods’ sakes, Merlin, wash your hands before you leave.” He turned towards the door with a smirk.

 

“ _You_ wash your hands,” Merlin called after him. It wasn’t the wittiest line he’d ever thought of, but Arthur was smirking in a very distracting way and Merlin was covered in what smelled awfully like decaying leeches, so he thought it was pretty good, all things considered.

 

It took him ten minutes just to get the stuff off his hands and he ran down to the stables with his shirt still soaked through at the sleeves. Arthur was waiting for him with a pleased look on his face and two horses shifting restlessly behind him.

 

“We’re going out for the day,” he announced.

 

Merlin stared at him. “We’re what?”

 

“We’re going riding together,” Arthur continued patiently.

 

Merlin blinked. “Arthur, you’ve never ridden _with_ me in your life. And don’t you have things to do? A kingdom to protect, perhaps?”

 

Arthur frowned at him. Merlin could see in his face that he’d been planning for a different reaction than the one that he was getting.

 

“Leon and Gwaine have offered to oversee everything,” he said. “Gwaine was particularly insistent.”

 

Merlin scowled, knowing that Gwaine would have jumped at the chance to let Arthur do something like this. “Fine,” he sighed, pushing his still-soggy sleeves up around his elbows and wandering around to tighten the straps on his horse’s saddle.

 

“Come on, Merlin, we don’t have all day,” Arthur said, swinging up into the saddle of his horse with an ease that Merlin still didn’t possess.

 

Merlin raised an eyebrow at him.“You’ve taken the day off,” he said, “so yes, I think we do.”

 

“Shut up, Merlin.”

 

Merlin shook his head and climbed into the saddle, prodding his horse into a trot as they headed towards the gate. He wanted to ride fast, to feel his horse pounding the ground beneath him and to see Arthur galloping hard alongside.

 

They didn’t slow until they were deep in the forest, and they had to duck their heads beneath the low-hanging branches as they rode. Merlin didn’t know where they were – the forest still looked all the same to him, a sea of dappled green that left him completely disoriented. Arthur seemed to know where they were going, though, because he would nudge his horse decisively onto a certain path at every narrow fork between the trees.

 

They soon came to a shallow stream, one with round, pale pebbles littering its streambed and leafy branches skimming its surface.

 

“I rode through here as a boy,” Arthur said, looking around as he reined in his horse. “And there –“ he pointed to one side of the stream, “That was where I learnt to swim.”

 

“Did your father teach you?” Merlin asked, surprised.

 

“No, Leon’s father did,” Arthur said. “Leon also learnt.”

 

Merlin smiled, detecting an edge of remembered rivalry in Arthur’s tone. “So there _is_ something that you aren’t the champion of,” he said.

 

Arthur frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous, Merlin,” he said indignantly. “Of course there isn’t.”

 

Merlin laughed, the sound loud in the still air.

 

They decided to stop by unspoken agreement, kicking off their boots and tethering their horses to trees in the grassy clearing beside the water. They left their clothes in haphazard piles on the bank and turned to the stream. Merlin eyed the water cautiously, watching in amusement as Arthur dived straight in, like Merlin had expected he would, and emerged seconds later gasping and swearing.

 

“It’s _cold,_ ” he said, and Merlin nodded, grinning wickedly. He had bathed in streams like these often enough that he could tell when the water was going to be icy.

 

Arthur looked over at him and caught sight of his grin before Merlin had time to wipe it off his face. He raised an eyebrow, as though daring Merlin to try and run, and then charged at him, sending them both tumbling into the water with a splash.

 

And then Merlin was underwater and he couldn’t see the surface, couldn’t see anything but the tangle of Arthur’s limbs and his own in the water. The events of years ago, with the Sidhe, came whipping into his mind as he tried to fight his way back into the air, but he pushed them away as his feet found the pebbled bottom of the stream and his head broke the surface.

 

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ ,” Merlin gasped. Arthur emerged beside him and started laughing, head thrown back and hands clutching at his sides.

 

“It isn’t funny, prat,” Merlin said, heart still pounding hard within his chest. He waded over to Arthur and held out his hands. “Look, I’ve gone blue.”

 

But Arthur simply flashed him a crooked smile, wrapped his arms tightly around Merlin’s waist and pulled him under again.

 

***

 

Once Merlin had tried – and entirely failed - to convince Arthur that, for normal people, swimming didn’t involve as much dunking as it did floating, they clambered out onto the hard-packed dirt bank, pulled on their breeches and sat close together in the sunlight while they tried to get dry. Merlin tipped his face up to the sunlight, eyes closed as he let the warmth sink into his skin. He felt happy, sitting there with stream-water dripping from his skin and Arthur’s shoulder bumping against his. The scent of summer, light and faded, was still lingering on the breeze that shook the branches above them, and it was easy to forget that there was any world outside of this one.

 

Arthur rose from the bank, after a while, and wandered over to the horses. He pulled lunch from the saddlebags and brought it back over to Merlin. There were apples, fat ones that Merlin knew Arthur had taken from the barrels deep within the castle where they were stored, a thick-crusted, white loaf of bread and, oddly enough, chicken. Merlin had forgotten what it was like to be able to buy whatever he wanted at the grocer’s, to be able to get things to eat whenever he wanted them. He’d  been in this world for so long that he’d almost forgotten the taste of things like chocolate and pot noodles and icecream - things that he had never thought he’d go without.

 

“Chicken?” he asked, eyebrow raised, when Arthur had sat back down beside him.

 

“I like it,” Arthur said firmly.

 

They ate quietly and then Merlin watched as Arthur threw the last crumbs of the bread over towards a bird that was sitting on one of the low branches overhanging the stream. He looked content, with his blonde hair pushed back off his forehead and a tiny smile quirking his lips.

 

Merlin smiled, feeling something pressing warm within his chest - not a big, sharp sort of a feeling, but a tiny, creeping one that he felt sure had been there all along, slowly inching its way forward into his heart. He loved Arthur, he realised, with that big, hold-onto-them-forever sort of love that he had never expected to find.

 

Arthur looked over at him and raised an eyebrow, and Merlin made a face. Arthur crawled across the dirt between them and pressed his lips against Merlin’s. He tasted faintly of apples.

 

This was going to hurt in the end, Merlin knew. But right now, with Arthur sprawled golden-skinned in front of him and the sun dancing warm upon the surface of the stream, he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

 

***

 

It was late in the afternoon when they finally arrived back at Camelot.

 

Elyan was waiting for them at the gate to the castle. “There’s a lady to see you,” he said. “She thinks she’s found a breach in the walls at the south end of town.”

 

Arthur nodded and swung down off his horse, handing his reins to Merlin.

 

“Have fun,” Merlin said cheerfully, watching him go. There were reports like that every other week, but it was usually up to one of Uther’s knights to go and investigate. Merlin wondered why Arthur had decided to go, then shrugged it off. It was probably just to  show the townspeople that he was willing to listen.

 

He wandered back up to the castle after he’d stabled the horses and saw Gwaine and Lancelot sitting by the water pump in the courtyard, with their shoulders bumping together and their backs flat against the cool stone wall of the castle. Merlin hesitated for a moment, unwilling to disturb them, but then Lancelot looked up and smiled at him, a soft curl of lips that dissolved away Merlin’s uncertainty. Gwaine waved an arm in his direction, beckoning him over, and he whispered something to Lancelot that made them both grin.

 

“There you are, princess,” Gwaine said as Merlin approached them. “Are you finished with Arthur for today?”

 

Merlin frowned, prodding Gwaine in the side with his foot. Lancelot laughed.

 

“Leave the man alone,” he said to Gwaine. “You deserve him, Merlin.”

 

“Thank you, Lancelot,” Merlin said, smiling at him. He turned to the pump and began to pull at the handle, watching as clear water flowed into the bucket beneath it.

 

“Well,” Gwaine said slowly, tilting his head back against the wall and closing his eyes, “I suppose so. You’ve been after him for long enough.” He grinned wickedly, teeth flashing.

 

Merlin gave a casual shrug, cupping his hands into the now-full bucket and lifting them to his lips. The water was cool and it cut the edge off the thirst that had been building all through the ride home. He drank a little more and then reached down for the bucket, his hands clenching tight on the rim, and threw the rest of the water at Gwaine.

 

“Hey,” Lancelot said, pushing his dripping hair off his forehead and frowning good-naturedly at him. “Try aiming next time, Merlin.”

 

Merlin bit back a laugh, turning to look at Gwaine. The man was half-drenched and staring at him with a grin on his face that Merlin was almost certain meant revenge. Merlin swallowed. He backed quickly away and then turned and sprinted for the opposite side of the courtyard, even though he knew that it would take a faster man than him to outrun a knight of Camelot.

 

What followed was – in Merlin’s opinion – the most vicious waterfight that Camelot had ever seen, in which Merlin was thoroughly defeated by Lancelot and Lancelot was thoroughly defeated by Gwaine. They even managed to draw Leon into battle, because Gwaine had spotted him walking down the steps towards them and he’d tossed an entire bucket over him.

 

“Gwaine,” Leon had warned, but Gwaine had simply grinned, bowed and thrown a second bucket at him (and Merlin wasn’t even sure how he’d got more buckets, though he suspected that Percival, who was watching them nonchalantly from one corner of the courtyard, might have had something to do with it). Leon had narrowed his eyes, stripped off his jacket and joined in with gusto after that.

 

By the time the sun was brushing the tops of the trees to the west, all four of them were sopping, gasping, and had collapsed in a vague sort of a heap over by the castle steps. It was there that Arthur found them several minutes later, when he returned from the lower town with Elyan.

 

“I am ever so glad I made you all knights,” he said dryly, staring down at them.

 

“You didn’t,” Merlin said brightly, struggling out from beneath Lancelot. Arthur narrowed his eyes at him.

 

“I can’t imagine why that would have been, _Mer_ lin,” he replied, running an eye over Merlin’s soggy, dishevelled clothes with his lips twitching. He looked over the other men and blinked.

 

“Leon?” he asked with surprise.

 

“Sire,” Leon said, straightening up and trying to straighten his clothes with one hand, water still dripping down his face from his hair. He flashed Arthur a guilty smile. 

 

Arthur gave a long-suffering sigh and shook his head. “Come on, Merlin,” he said, and Merlin followed him up towards the castle, turning his head back in time to see Gwaine wink at him.

 

***

 

They were woken just before dawn the next day by the sound of someone tapping on the door to Arthur’s chambers. Merlin rolled over, still half-asleep, as Arthur unwrapped his arm from around Merlin’s waist and padded over to answer it.

 

“Who was it?” Merlin asked when Arthur had shut the door again. The prince was reaching for his shirt with a grim expression.

 

“Leon,” he said. “There’s a messenger from Mercia come to see the king.”

 

Merlin blinked and sat up. “Shouldn’t the king be seeing him, then?” he asked, climbing out of bed and picking up Arthur’s jacket off the floor, which was where the man had left it the previous night.

 

Arthur’s jaw clenched slightly, and his hands stilled on the laces of his shirt. “He’s not well,” he said after a moment.

 

“Oh,” said Merlin. “I’m sorry, Arthur.” He knew that Morgana’s reign had shattered something inside Uther, but he had looked better when Merlin had seen him recently - his gaze full of that familiar icy authority, his voice firm as he ordered his knights out on patrol.

 

But there were still brief moments when he seemed broken and hollow, as though there wasn’t as much of him beneath his skin as their used to be. It was at those moments that Merlin could see that Morgana had beaten him – that she had taken from him some tiny, deep part of himself that he had never expected to lose. He wondered whether she’d intended for him to end up like this when she’d planned her revenge. He hoped not.

 

Arthur shrugged, taking the jacket from Merlin’s hands and pushing his arms through the sleeves. “It isn’t as though I haven’t been expecting this, Merlin,” he said. “I have been raised to rule, after all. This time was always going to come.” He ran a hand over his face and turned towards the window, his shoulders tight.

 

“Not that I will have to rule yet,” he added quickly, but Merlin recognised the uncertainty there, wavering low and faint below the surface of Arthur’s voice. He stepped forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of Arthur’s mouth.

 

“You won’t,” he said. “It will be okay.” He felt as though he was trying to convince himself as much as he was Arthur, because he could feel unease drifting through the corners of his chest and snagging against his heart. _Not yet,_ he told himself firmly. _There is still time._

 

Arthur looked over at him with that expression he got sometimes, the one that Merlin knew meant that he thought that Merlin was being silly and far too optimistic and just a little bit wise.

 

But Merlin wasn’t wise, not really. He simply knew enough of the legend to convince Arthur that he spoke the truth in moments when Arthur was unsure. He simply knew enough of the future to persuade Arthur that there were paths upon which a man’s life had no choice but to run, as swift and as helpless as a drop of water within a river.

 

This wasn’t one of those times, though. This time, Merlin didn’t want to know the truth.

 

“Go back to bed, Merlin,” Arthur said, picking up his sword from the table, but Merlin shook his head.

 

“I’ll come too,” he replied, stooping to pick up his shirt off the floor and dragging it over his head. Arthur hesitated for a moment and then nodded.

 

The room was still half bathed in shadow when they left it.

 

***

 

The knights were all in the hall when they arrived, looking tired and worn out. Merlin could see Gwaine swaying against Leon’s side, and he wondered whether the man had been out drinking the night before. It seemed likely.

 

“Where is the messenger?” Arthur asked, and a small, skinny man stepped forward and looked at Arthur.

 

“I have a message for the king,” he started uncertainly, looking around the room as if to check if Uther was there.

 

“I am his son, Arthur Pendragon. You will speak to me.”

 

The man hesitated for a moment and then inclined his head. “I bring news from the courts of Mercia,” he said. “There is word of an army moving through the outer lands towards Camelot.”

 

 “From who did your king hear this?”

 

“Several members of the king’s guard came across them,” the man replied. “Only one survived. He says – he says that they were of magic.” He looked up at Arthur with wide eyes. Merlin knew that Camelot’s stance on sorcery was well-known, and he wondered whether the man was afraid of what Arthur’s reaction to the bearer of such news would be. 

 

Arthur looked at the man, his face impassive. “How far from Camelot was this army?” he asked.

 

“A week away, perhaps two. They were stationary when our men came across them. It is still possible that they may turn inwards, towards Mercia.” He swallowed.

 

“Very well,” said Arthur. “I must talk this over with my men.” He turned to Merlin. “Show him to the spare chambers.”

 

Merlin nodded and the man followed him out of the hall.

 

“Is he your master?” The man asked after they’d shut the doors firmly behind them.

 

“Yeah,” Merlin said, turning the corner and heading for the stairs. The man had to jog to catch up.

 

“He any good?” the man continued. “I’ve had a few terrible ones in my time, and your prince looks right royal. I know that type. They’re all imperious and commanding and complain about everything.” He nodded to himself. “Me and the other servants back in Mercia, we heard all about your prince. Won’t be as good as that Uther fellow, we think.”

 

Merlin stopped walking and bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, trying to stop himself from swinging his fist into the man’s face. “What’s your name?” he asked curtly, and the man blinked at him.

 

“Henry,” he said.

 

“Well, Henry,” Merlin said, voice full of barely-contained anger, “you may tell your friends that not only is Arthur Pendragon is the best man in all of Camelot, he will also be the greatest king that any kingdom has seen. And your room is there,” he added, jabbing a finger towards one of the doors. He turned away, walking back down the steps and leaving Henry staring after him in confusion.

 

***

 

Arthur sent a message back to Mercia, later that day, thanking them for their warning and telling them that Camelot would be perfectly prepared for any attack that came.

 

A few days after that there was to be a feast, one that was held each year to mark the end of winter. Merlin spent more time polishing than he had in months, because Arthur had decided that he wanted his oldest pair of boots shined up for the evening and nothing that Merlin did would dissuade him.

 

“But shouldn’t you be preparing for the attack?” he asked one morning, after Arthur had told him that he needed his red jacket aired for the feast.

 

“I have sent out patrols to the furthest corners of the kingdom, Merlin, and I have doubled the number of guards on duty each night. A single army is not going to stand in the way of a century of tradition,” Arthur replied. “And my sword needs polishing before the feast.”

 

Merlin leered at him, waggling his eyebrows, but Arthur simply rolled his eyes and sighed.

 

“You really are an idiot, Merlin,” he said.

 

***

 

The day before the feast, Merlin ran into Gwen coming out from the kitchens with her arms full of fabric to put over the tables in the hall.

 

“Need a hand?” he asked, because she looked as though she was going to fall down beneath the weight of it.

 

Gwen smiled at him, nodding, and together they carried the cloth up the steps and into the hall. She had been doing a lot of odd jobs like this recently, ones that the kitchen maids were too busy to do. Merlin knew that she hadn’t quite had a purpose in Camelot since Morgana had left.

 

“So,” Merlin said. He dropped down onto one of the chairs and looked over at Gwen, who was smoothing the last lengths of the fabric out over the tables. “How’s Lancelot?”

 

Gwen looked sharply over at him, her cheeks flushed with colour and her dark curls falling around her face. “I don’t – what do you -” she started.

 

Merlin grinned. “It’s okay,” he said. “I won’t say anything.”

 

“There isn’t anything to say, Merlin,” she said firmly and then walked over to sit in the chair next to his. “It’s good that he’s a knight now, though, isn’t it?”

 

Merlin smiled at her. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”

 

Gwen smiled warmly back at him and Merlin realised that she looked happy, completely so. He hadn’t seen that look on her face for a long, long while.  He was happy for her, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was slowly closing in on them – that there would be a point, somewhere not too far off, when everything would have to fall apart.

 

 ***

 

It was when he was standing beside Gwen at the feast, discussing how drunk they thought the knights were going to get this time around, that he noticed it. Arthur was looking at him. Not at Gwen, who was standing beside him with her skin glowing in the firelight, and not at his father, or at the other knights, but at _Merlin_.

 

It was a tiny thing, he thought later, something that really shouldn’t have driven as hard into his heart as it did. But he could feel Arthur’s eyes on him in that moment and for a second all he could see was himself – not as he was now, but as he’d been ten years earlier and a thousand years forward in time, sitting in the centre of his tiny wooden bed with his blanket pulled up around his chin and the book balanced on his knees. He’d needed a dictionary beside him then, because there were still some words that he didn’t quite understand. He would pause every so often in his reading, sliding a thumb between the pages and flipping through the dictionary in search of each new word. That book had helped him to read, it had helped him to grow, and it had been there with him in almost every moment of his childhood, whether it was when he was sitting at the kitchen table with his dinner going cold because he was too busy reading to eat it, or sprinting across the long grass of his backyard with Will, sticks held aloft like swords, because Will had liked the battle parts of the book when Merlin had read them out to him.

 

He was destroying his own story, he realised now, watching Gwen’s face as she looked around the room. It wasn’t the story he belonged within, but it had shaped his life as completely and as surely as if it was.

 

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said suddenly. Gwen looked back at him in confusion.

 

“What?” she asked, but Merlin didn’t answer. Arthur was still looking at him, his gaze firm on Merlin’s face, and Merlin _knew_ that look. He’d seen it whenever Arthur was with his knights, and he could see it whenever Arthur looked down at Camelot as they returned to it after a day of hunting or a week of patrols. It was a little bit loving, a little bit proud, and it was the look that Merlin had always dreamed that a man would give him. But it couldn’t be Arthur. He wasn’t supposed to be real enough in this world for Arthur to look at him like that. He wasn’t meant to be here.

 

Merlin set the jug he’d been holding down onto the edge of the table, his hands unsteady as he pulled them back. He had to leave, and he still didn’t know how to get back. He didn’t know where to go, but he couldn’t stay – he was ruining everything, and he should have known from the very first moment that he set foot in Camelot that this would happen, because if there was one thing that he could always trust himself to do, it was to interfere.

 

He could feel the beginnings of panic swirling inside his chest, pounding through his veins and making it impossible to think, because for the first time in the many months he’d been here, he could feel how deeply, unwaveringly _wrong_ it was that he’d come here at all. Merlin looked around the room, inhaling deeply. He could see Gwaine, sitting over with Leon and Percival and Lancelot with his hand curled around a flagon of mead and a grin spread wide across his face. He looked happy, the sort of happy that stemmed from finding the place you belonged. Merlin wasn’t Gwaine’s only friend anymore, he had the knights and he had Arthur, his lord and his leader. Merlin knew about the deep bond that existed between knights, he’d read of it often enough. He knew that Gwaine wasn’t running away from his destiny anymore. He had been, back when he was dancing through taverns and towns with his horse and his sword and nothing else to hold to his name.

 

But Gwaine had grown up, or at least realised that there was something that he could be that was better than a man who spent all his time fighting in taverns. He was a knight now – and perhaps he wasn’t as strong or as wise as he’d one day be, but he was on that path, and Merlin was so, _so_ proud of him for getting there.

 

He walked towards the door of the hall, flashing a grin at Gwaine as he passed the knights by. He could see Gaius at the table closest to the door, the old man’s face relaxed as he ate. Gaius was one of a handful of people who knew what Merlin could do, and he had accepted Merlin in spite of that. He’d looked after him, he’d tried his best to find a way to get him home, and he was as close to a father as Merlin was ever going to get. Gaius had remained in Camelot for Merlin, even when Alice was fleeing the city. He’d risked his life for Merlin and he’d protected him throughout Merlin’s time in Camelot, and Merlin loved him for that.

He couldn’t stay for Gaius, though. Gaius was a part of the legend, even if he wasn’t mentioned within it. He’d looked after Arthur when the prince was sick and he’d been there throughout every moment of Arthur’s childhood, making sure that Arthur was well enough and strong enough to survive.  He wasn’t the centre of the story, but he was there at its edges, and Merlin had to leave him behind.

 

Merlin slid quietly out of the door, standing in the passageway for a long moment with his eyes fixed on the stone floor beneath his feet. He didn’t want to look back at the main table, because he didn’t want to know if Arthur had noticed him leave. He couldn’t be the one that Arthur looked for when he entered the room. He couldn’t be the one that Arthur loved. But even so, he didn’t want to see Arthur with his knights around him, smiling at his father with that crooked smile he had, the firelight gleaming through his hair and washing gold across his face. He didn’t want his last memory of Arthur to be one of Arthur without him. He knew what Arthur would be like without him, because he’d read it a hundred times over. He would be a king without Merlin, and he would be magnificent.

 

He walked back to Gaius’ chambers, then, the knowledge of what he needed to do weighing heavy in his chest. He didn’t know how he’d do it – whether he’d try to find his own way back to Ealdor, or whether he’d go to the Ealdor in this time. He’d heard about it; it was a tiny village somewhere on the edge of Cendred’s old kingdom, and if he found it he could stay there until – Merlin cut off that thought before he could finish it, because he didn’t know how long he’d have to stay there if he couldn’t find a way back to his Ealdor. He didn’t want to live out his life as a farmer, unable to see his mother, Will, Arthur, or any of the knights ever again.

 

He’d find a way back to his time, he told himself. Gaius didn’t own all of the spellbooks in the world; there would be one in some other kingdom that he could find and use to get back. That’s what he’d do, he realised, climbing the steps to his room and pushing the door open. He’d find the right spell, even if it took him all the years of his life to do so, and even if it meant that he was old and grey by the time he pushed his way back through into his own world.

 

Merlin pulled his backpack out from underneath his bed, stuffing his clothes and his laptop and his ipod inside. He was rushing, now, trying to outrace his own thoughts, because if he stopped to think about his decision then he’d never find it within himself to leave. But it was harder than he’d thought it would be to remember which of his belongings was his, and which he hadn’t had before he’d come to Camelot. The neckerchief that Gwen had given him months ago was mixed up with the ones he’d brought from Ealdor and he could barely tell which was which. His trainers looked strange when he pulled them up from beneath the floorboards, because he’d been wearing the faded brown boots that Gaius had given him for so long that he couldn’t remember what it felt like to wear anything else.

 

He was finished packing before the feast was over. Tugging the zipper on his backpack closed, he stared once more around the room, remembering how it had felt to sleep in it that very first night. He’d changed since then. He’d grown up, he’d fallen in love, he’d seen men fight and fall, he’d learnt what it truly was to have magic and what it meant to use it for something important – to save people’s lives and to hold Camelot together.

 

It hurt to think that this was the end. That this – this world, that he’d been dreaming of since he was tiny and that he’d felt so at home within – wasn’t his to have. But he’d known that all along.

 

He pulled the bag onto his back, yanking on the straps to tighten them and then walked out of the door of the room, letting it bang shut behind him as he made his way through Gaius’ chambers.

 

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye?”

 

Merlin jumped, whipping his head around to see Gaius in the corner of the room, standing near his workbench with his eyebrow raised.

 

“Gaius,” Merlin started, feeling the beginnings of guilt stirring through his stomach. “How did you know?”

 

“I’ve been around long enough to tell when you’re planning something, Merlin,” he said. Merlin gave him a small smile, feeling something cracking in the hard layer he’d pushed over the top of his feelings to keep them from bursting out and stopping him.

 

“I have to go, Gaius,” he said, the words sounding almost like a plea as they crossed his lips. “I –“ He stopped, pulling the bag off his back and reaching into it for the book. Gaius deserved an explanation. It was the least that Merlin could give him.

 

“I know what’s going to happen,” he said, holding the book up for Gaius to see. “It’s all written here, Gaius – Arthur’s life, and all about the knights, and Gwen, and Morgana, and I’m changing all that by being here.” He was changing that by being close to Arthur.

 

“Everyone is so certain that I belong here, Gaius,” he finished. “But I _can’t_. It isn’t my destiny.”

 

Gaius looked from Merlin’s face down to the book in his hands and back again, his face thoughtful.

 

“Not everything that is written comes to pass, Merlin,” he said quietly. “Not everything that has been written is true.”

 

Merlin stared at him, his fingers tightening on the book’s cover. “This is true,” he said, holding it up. “I know it is, Gaius. All of the characters are here. It’s all the same.” He reached down and picked up his backpack from where it lay, pushing the book back into it to avoid looking at Gaius, because he hadn’t wanted to do this. He needed to leave, but he didn’t want to say goodbye. It seemed too final if he did that.

 

“I think that you’re wrong, Merlin,” Gaius said, but Merlin recognised his tone, because he’d heard it before, on every occasion when Merlin had tried to use his magic to fix something. He knew what it meant - that Gaius wouldn’t stop him from leaving. The old man understood Merlin’s belief in the book, even if he didn’t share it. Gaius never stopped him, even when he thought whatever plan Merlin had concocted was dangerous, or foolhardy. He wasn’t the type of person who prevented things from happening, he just tried to fix them after they had. He would fix this, if Merlin decided to leave. He’d pick up all of the pieces that Merlin left, when he tore himself out of the life he’d created for himself in Camelot, because that had always been what the old man was good at.

 

Merlin looked up at him then, his throat burning with emotion. Gaius looked so old, standing there in his familiar old robes, his skin riddled with lines, his face almost blank as he looked back at Merlin. It was, Merlin realised,  the look of a man who knew that he’d outlived everyone he’d ever loved, because he knew best of all that where Merlin was planning to go, he couldn’t ever follow.

 

There was silence for a moment while they looked at each other, and Merlin wondered whether he couldn’t just stay like this, forever on the edge of leaving but never quite gone, because it was easier than seeing Gaius’ face fall as Merlin turned away.

 

But this time, Gaius was the first one to break the silence.

 

“Good luck, my boy,” he said, stepping towards Merlin and wrapping an arm around him. Merlin hugged him back, a press of warmth that didn’t quite last for long enough, and then he swung his arm through the strap of his backpack and turned away.

 

***

 

The castle was quiet as he left it, looming silent and cold behind him as he wandered down towards the gate. He didn’t recognise the guards slumbering beneath it, but their uniforms were bright in the twilight.

 

The stables were dark as he walked past them. He listened to the soft snuffling sounds of the animals within and wondered whether he should take his horse. But he didn’t - it wasn’t really his horse, it was Arthur’s, and Merlin wanted to leave Camelot the way he’d arrived, with his feet thudding hard against the stone and the straps of his backpack digging hard into his shoulders.

 

He walked with his eyes fixed firmly on the ground beneath his feet and his chest aching with each step. It was only when he’d passed through the final gate and he felt grass soft beneath his feet that he paused and turned to look back.

 

He could still see the town despite the growing darkness, spread out behind him, the castle tiny and grey within its walls. It looked so small, so insignificant, and Merlin felt as though he could see all of time in the wide lands around it. Camelot was afloat in the centuries, half-buried, so that only the tiniest of pieces remained. There would be no round table in a thousand years’ time, no memory of Gaius or of the townsfolk who Merlin saw, each and every day. Arthur would remain, yes, but that was because Arthur was extraordinary, and the life he led was destined to be greater than he knew.

 

Merlin didn’t know how long he stood there, his eyes fixed on the town, watching as it sank slowly into the darkness, until he couldn’t see anything but the trees around him and the grass beneath his feet and the wide black arc of the sky.

 

He didn’t move far that night, setting down his bag a little way back from the road not long after nightfall and using his magic to light a campfire. He sat down close beside it, feeling the heat of it on his face as he dug through his bag for food. He hadn’t spent the night outside of Camelot by himself for a long time. It had always been him and Arthur, or him and Gwaine, and Merlin found that the forest seemed a lot lonelier when he didn’t have anyone sitting close beside him.

 

Merlin picked up a stick and poked it into the fire, watching the end slowly blacken with heat. He wasn’t going to think about Arthur. He wasn’t going to think about any of it, because it would just tear at that little part of his chest that had been full up with love until that afternoon, until that moment when Merlin had realised that he couldn’t stay.

 

He looked down as he felt a pain in his hand, and he realised that he’d been clenching his fingers tight around the rough length of the stick. He loosened his hand and threw it into the fire, watching it burn in the smoky yellow flames. It was gone far too quickly, until all Merlin could see of it was a few crumbling black pieces, glowing red at the edges, and even those were soon lost to the flames.

 

“Sorry,” he said quietly, but he didn’t really know who he was apologising to.

 

***

 

Merlin woke before dawn to the familiar thud-thud of wings above the canopy. He rolled onto his back beneath his thin blanket, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and staring up through the trees. Of course the dragon would try and stop this, he thought. The dragon thought that Merlin’s destiny was the only thing that mattered. It thought that Merlin’s place was here, even though Merlin knew that it wasn’t. Merlin knew that the world of Camelot with him in it was not the right world, and if that was his destiny then he’d just have to leave it behind.

 

He watched as the dragon found a gap between the trees and swooped low into the clearing, landing beside the low remains of the fire and peering down at him with a solemn expression on its scaly face.

 

“Warlock,” it said, its voice echoing loudly above Merlin. “There is nothing to be gained from trying to run from your destiny.”

 

Merlin pulled his legs free of his blanket and got to his feet. “It’s Arthur’s destiny, not mine,” he said loudly, staring up at it. The dragon blinked down at him.

 

“You cannot pull one from the other, young warlock,” it said. “You yourself have seen to that.”

 

“What do you mean?” Merlin asked, frowning. “I haven’t done anything.”

 

“It is not what you have done, Merlin, but how you feel.” The dragon lowered its neck and dropped down into a crouch, inviting Merlin to climb onto its back. “Come, and you will see.”

 

Merlin hesitated for a moment, staring from the remains of the campfire to the dragon and back again. He shouldn’t listen to it; he should turn and walk away along the road and forget that the dragon had talked to him at all, but he was curious and it couldn’t hurt to have one last fly, surely. Arthur didn’t even know the dragon was still alive, so it couldn’t interfere too much with his life.

 

He picked up his bag and his blanket from the grass and walked towards the dragon, putting his foot against its leg and stepping up onto its back as carefully as he could. It always felt strange doing this, because the dragon wasn’t some horse, or donkey, but a talking, intelligent being.

 

They took off rapidly, so that Merlin was left clinging desperately to the dragon’s scaly hide so that he didn’t slide off. They didn’t go as far as he’d expected, though, simply pushing hard up into the air and circling around so that Merlin could see Camelot spread out below him to his right.

 

Merlin gasped. The castle had smoke billowing from one side – thick, dark columns that curled through the air and obscured the view. There was some sort of a fight going on inside the walls of the town, and Merlin could see flashes of red – knights, he thought – striking out at a far larger force of darker clothed figures.

 

“What’s happening?” he cried to the dragon, his voice faint over the roar of the wind.

 _A sorcerer,_ the dragon replied, only this time its voice was loud in Merlin’s mind. _From the kingdom of Mercia._ _He attacked Camelot in the night with his men._

 

Merlin gaped down at the town as they circled once more over it, panic surging inside his chest. There were dark figures everywhere, hundreds of them spread over the lower town, and the red figures were getting fewer and fewer as they fell beneath the onslaught.

 _But Arthur’s knights are the best in the land,_ he thought.

 _Those forces are of magic,_ the dragon said. _They live while the sorcerer does._

 

Merlin shook his head. _Camelot will survive this,_ he thought fiercely. He couldn’t interfere anymore, he’d made his decision. Arthur would survive without him there, he knew. It was written that way.

 

The dragon was circling lower now, its claws grazing the thin upper branches of the trees as it sought out the clearing. _Perhaps,_ it said. _Perhaps not. All things can change, young warlock._ It touched down heavily on the grass and Merlin slid off its back, feeling his knees wobble slightly at the feel of firm ground beneath his feet. He looked behind him when he’d regained his balance, but the dragon was already taking off again, its wings beating hard as it rose above the trees.

 

“Wait!” Merlin called, but it didn’t stop.

 

Merlin stood still until the thud of wing beats had faded into the distance, then he walked slowly back over to the remains of the campfire, the image of Camelot burning still fierce within his mind. They would win this, Merlin thought. Arthur’s story was still following the lines of the legend, Merlin was sure it was, and that meant that they couldn’t lose today.

 

But it was magic that they were fighting against, and Merlin didn’t know how they’d stand a chance without magic of their own. Gaius could try to help, Merlin supposed, but the old man didn’t have the power needed to destroy another sorcerer.  He kicked a foot against the ground, frustrated. It would be so much easier to turn away if he knew _how_ they were going to defeat the enemy.

 

He tugged his bag more firmly onto his shoulders and walked out through the trees towards the road, his thoughts tumbling fast and uncertain through his mind. He couldn’t stay, he told himself firmly. There were going to be many more battles like this that Arthur and his knights would have to win on their own. But Merlin didn’t know how to turn away when his friends and his home were in danger, because that was what Camelot was to him now, even if he was choosing to leave it behind. He’d lived here long enough to come to love its sand-coloured walls and its quiet stone passageways and the way it seemed both centuries old and brand new, all at once. He loved the things he’d done inside it. He loved the people that he’d met there. He couldn’t stay, but he couldn’t leave, either.

 

He’d only just stepped onto the path, still unsure of which way he would turn, when there was a fierce roar from off to his right. Merlin froze, his heart beating painfully hard within his chest, because he _knew_ that roar. It was Arthur’s. It was the sound he made when he was angry and determined and fighting as hard as he could to survive.

 

“Arthur!” he shouted and he was running before the word had left his lips, his arms pumping hard, his neckerchief skewed to one side, his feet pressing hard into the dirt, with some tiny part of his mind praying that he wouldn’t fall, not this time, because he’d never been this far away when Arthur needed him.

 

He heard the familiar hum of magic as he dodged through the trees, branches whipping at his face. It was a low sound, building slowly as Merlin ran, like a countdown that he had to beat. A memory drifted through the edge of his mind, of how he’d run like this in PE at school, of how he’d never beat the timer.

 

He ducked beneath a low-slung branch and stopped short as the forest gave way to a clearing, gaping wide and sunlit around him. There was Arthur, his sword held strong and sure in his hand, his golden face fierce as he advanced towards the far end of it. He was moving fast, almost charging, though Merlin couldn’t see what he was moving towards.

 

The hum was loud now, almost deafening, and Merlin stepped forward, his hand outstretched, calling his magic to him even as he searched for the sorcerer in the shadows beneath the trees. But he couldn’t see the man; Arthur was almost at the edge of the clearing, showing no signs of stopping. Merlin stepped forward once more and suddenly he could _see_ , as clearly as if he’d walked out of a mist. He could see the sorcerer, dark-haired and tall, standing opposite Arthur. Merlin let his magic flow out towards the man, but it was too late. He could feel the man’s power surging through his chest as the sorcerer channelled it out from his body and across the clearing, a stream of red light that hit Arthur full on and he crumpled, even as the light faded and the sorcerer fell beneath Merlin’s magic.

 

“Arthur!” Merlin shouted, running to where the prince lay and falling to his knees beside him. He cupped a hand to the side of his face, but Arthur didn’t respond, and there was no pulse beneath the pale golden skin of his throat. Merlin shook him, his fingers hooked in the links of Arthur’s chainmail, pushing his magic into Arthur’s body with the same soft words he’d heard the crystal cave man speak.

 

“Arthur,” he whispered, once the spell was finished and all the gold had seeped beneath Arthur’s skin. But the man didn’t move, he didn’t wake up, and that scared Merlin more than anything, because that spell was all he had to give Arthur and it seemed almost as though – as though Arthur was dead. He couldn’t be, though, because that wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. Arthur Pendragon died a king, not a prince. Arthur Pendragon did not die in the arms of a boy named Merlin Emrys. It wasn’t written that way. It was _wrong_.

 

All things can change, the dragon had said. But it hadn’t been talking about this.

 

Merlin pushed at his magic again, desperate now, his eyes closed so that he couldn’t see Arthur’s face blank and pale before him.

 

“Come on, Arthur,” he whispered, the words sinking deep into his mind like a litany, _come on Arthur, come Arthur, come on._ He could feel his eyes burning, as though he’d walled the sea in behind them and it was trying to seep free. His throat was aching with a grief he wasn’t going to let himself feel, not while there was still a chance that Arthur would get up, but even so, the middle of his chest felt like it was slowly pounding its way out of his body, tearing through his skin and ripping apart.

 

He was forcing his magic now, he could feel it tugging at his veins like it didn’t want to leave his body, and he could sense it bleeding out into the air around him and into the dirt pressed hard beneath his knees, because he’d given all that he could to Arthur and the man’s body wouldn’t take any more.

 

“You’re not dead,” he said, tugging Arthur closer to him, but his voice sounded hollow and weak in the silence of the clearing.

 

He looked around the clearing and there was the sorcerer, lying face down on the ground, and Merlin could feel it, suddenly, a fierce rage pumping through his veins. He had never wanted anyone dead more than he did in that moment, even as he saw the life leaking thick and red out of the man. He wanted to channel his magic through the sorcerer’s body, to bring him back to life just so that the man could feel all that Merlin was feeling, and then watch him die again while he was wrapped in Merlin’s grief, while he could feel Merlin’s sorrow in every fibre of his being.

 

But Merlin had no control over his magic, not now, not when he had Arthur’s body in his arms and the prince’s face turned up towards his own. He hadn’t seen this. He hadn’t known that it was possible for this to happen and he was shaking with it; he couldn’t understand. His thoughts were screaming at him, he could feel tears burning tracks down his face, dripping onto Arthur’s armour and onto Merlin’s sleeves and _fuck_ , he couldn’t. There was no way that his body could hold that much pain. It was like someone had driven a knife into his chest, only he couldn’t yank it out because it was buried too deep inside him. He couldn’t find its edges.

 

He stared down into Arthur’s face. The prince looked almost the same as he did all those mornings when Merlin walked into his room before the man was up, and didn’t prod him awake, instead simply wandering around the room and adjusting things until Arthur shifted upwards through his dreams and surfaced slowly from them. But Arthur wasn’t asleep, this time.

 

He shifted slightly, holding the prince closer to him, and felt a tiny surge of surprise when he felt his knees press harder against the ground. The earth was still there.  It was still there and the trees were still arching overhead and through them he could see the sky, wide and dark with smoke and there was too much world for him, now. There was so much of it, and so much of time. He could feel each second passing, and Arthur would be forgotten, because there was no room in history for a golden-haired boy who slipped out of the world before he could press himself into its memory.

 

He screamed, then, and there was power in that scream, he could feel his magic punching out of his body, burning his throat, like it wanted to set the trees alight. There was nothing anymore – not the hard press of the ground beneath his knees, nor the feel of the cold night air drying the salty tracks of his tears, nor the quiet sound of the forest – quiet because there was no one but Merlin alive within it. Those things all vanished. Merlin couldn’t feel the world anymore. There _was_ no world anymore. There was nothing but Merlin and his magic and Arthur’s body heavy in his hands, the prince’s chainmail making tiny dents against Merlin’s forearms, his blonde hair still matted with mud and his face still damp with sweat.

 

 

Merlin was still screaming, or perhaps he’d already stopped. It was impossible to tell, because his magic was roaring louder than Merlin had ever heard it, and Merlin wondered for a brief second whether he could lose himself in it, whether it could consume him completely until there was no Merlin, and there was no Arthur, and there was nothing but the light and the heat and the power of it flowing outwards from this spot. This magic was fiery – it could burn forests, and flatten castles, and dry up oceans, because there was a raw edge to it that Merlin had never felt before. He let it free, then, until there was a sea of gold before him, and Merlin could feel it all – he could feel it stretching all the way to the edge of the world, and further – beyond that, into the darkness, which was not darkness at all but light, because the magic was bursting through it, lighting up the skies and the planets and the stars.

 

He could feel it twisting through his chest, rooted there, pulling at his grief and his longing to reverse all this, to go home so that he could be with his mother and Will and know that Arthur would still be alive. Alive, and laughing at Merlin, his elbow bumping against Merlin’s side as they walked along, and it didn’t matter if Arthur married Gwen, Merlin didn’t care, he just needed Arthur to be alive again.

 

And then there was a noise like the end of the world, a huge, ground-shaking roar, and the clearing was suddenly filled with yellow light. Merlin looked up and saw the world in front of him – not this world, with its forests and dirt and castles, but the grey concrete world of Ealdor.

 

But he was still in the clearing, his knees were still pressed into the dirt. It was as though he’d ripped something open between this place and Ealdor. He could see the roads and the grey sidewalk and the low, flat lines of the buildings, as different from Camelot as it was possible to be. Camelot was all sand-coloured arches and light and strong walls, all tree-lined roads and buttresses wide open to the sky, not huddling beneath it as these buildings were, like they wanted to crawl back into the earth they were built upon.

 

And Merlin knew that these were the buildings that he had grown up within, but he couldn’t bring himself to see them as part of his home. It was like staring at himself in a mirror at the end of a hallway, and knowing who it was that he was looking at, but at the same time unsure of how anyone so distant and dark and strange could possibly be himself.

 

He could see the edge of a street, hear the odd, unfamiliar rumble of traffic as it passed by out of view, and then, just as the golden light was beginning to fade and the grey buildings were drifting out of focus, a man stumbled through the gap and slid to his knees before Merlin.

 

“Move,” he said, dragging Arthur’s body out of Merlin’s arms and laying it flat on the ground. “Merlin, look at me. You need to get rid of this.” He pointed at Arthur’s armour, and Merlin pulled up the last of his magic and laid his hand on Arthur’s chest, sending the metal crumbling away in the seconds before he slipped into unconsciousness.

 

***

 

“Merlin, wake up.”

 

Merlin opened his eyes slowly, his insides feeling like they had been sucked through a vacuum cleaner. He raised a hand to his head, trying to sooth the dull ache there, and then sat bolt upright as he remembered what had happened.

 

“Arthur,” he cried, staring around the clearing, but a hand pushed hard against his shoulder, keeping him from standing. Merlin tried to prise it off, looking over at its owner, and -

 

“ _Will?_ ”

 

“That’d be me, yes.” Will eyed him warily, as though he was afraid Merlin would faint, or punch him across the face, or both.

 

“What are you –“ Merlin broke off, remembering Arthur. “Where’s Arthur?”

 

“The bloke with the chainmail?” Will nodded off to Merlin’s right, and Merlin looked over to see Arthur lying with his eyes closed, his shirt torn open and mud streaked across his face. He jumped to his feet, tearing away from Will’s hand from his shoulder and dropping down beside the prince. Arthur was breathing steadily and Merlin could feel his heart beating firmly within his chest when he placed a hand over it. Arthur was alive. He was alive, he was breathing. Merlin wrapped his arms around the prince and tugged him half into his lap, his fingers running over Arthur’s face and stroking through his hair, because Merlin had thought that he was dead – he _had_ been dead - and Merlin wasn’t ever going to let go of him again.

 

“He’s fine,” Will said, staring from Merlin to Arthur and back again with curiosity written clear across his face. “You must have pumped a tonne of magic into him though, mate, his skin only stopped glowing five minutes ago.”

 

Merlin looked over at Will and grinned, the relief floating through his chest making him feel almost giddy.

 

“How the hell did you get here, Will?”

 

Will frowned, his eyes still fixed on Arthur’s face. “Haven’t the faintest. All I know is that one minute I’m walking down South Street in Ealdor, wondering whether I’ve got time to stop in at The Green Dragon before my lunchbreak ends, and the next I see you sitting here in this forest with him in your arms.” He looked around the forest, as though he was only just realising that he was still in it. “And you better be able to get me back, Merlin, because I’m going to get fired if I miss one more shift.”

 

Merlin blinked at him, trying to understand. “You mean it was because of my magic?” He frowned. He’d pushed out with his magic and somehow he’d managed to find the spell that Gaius had been searching for since he’d first arrived in Camelot. Only he hadn’t used it to get back, but rather to pull Will through. He’d found the one person he knew who could help Arthur - even though that person was a thousand years away - and he’d dragged him into the world of Camelot.

 

Will nodded. “I wouldn’t go trying to heal people before casting that spell, though. You were almost worse off than him when I got to you,” he said, waving a hand at Arthur. “Who is he, anyway?”

 

Merlin looked down at the prince with a smile, his fingers still tangled in Arthur’s golden hair. “He’s Arthur Pendragon,” he said quietly. “The once and future king.”

 

Will stared at Merlin for a full three seconds, his eyes wide.

 

“You mean he’s-“

 

“Yes, Will.”

 

“He’s the bloke you –“

 

“ _Yes,_ Will.”

 

“Are you two –“

 

“ _Yes,_ Will.” Merlin blinked. “Wait, what?” But Will was already grinning wickedly.

 

“ _Nice_ one, Merlin.”

 

Arthur gave a groan and shifted slightly in Merlin’s lap, and Merlin glanced down at him in alarm. The prince’s eyes were still closed, but Merlin could tell that he was coming to.

 

“He’s waking up,” Will said cheerfully, and Merlin looked over at him.

 

“Will, go wait behind a tree,” he said. Will’s face fell. “Please? I can’t explain how you’re here yet. He doesn’t know –“ Merlin broke off. Arthur didn’t know _anything_ – not about where Merlin was from, nor about his magic, nor about his life before Camelot. Will stared at him for a long moment and then nodded, getting to his feet and walking over towards the edge of the clearing.

 

“But Merlin?” he called. Merlin looked up at him, standing across the clearing in his jeans and tshirt, his hands muddy and his expression understanding. “You should tell him.”

 

***

 

Arthur woke slowly, his eyelids fluttering and his fingers scrabbling at the dirt. Merlin was used to Arthur waking from unconsciousness, but this time was different, because he’d never been so close to death before. He caught Arthur’s hands tight within his own and held them, making sure that the prince knew that he wasn’t in battle anymore, that he didn’t have to reach for his sword or roll to avoid a blow as soon as he opened his eyes.

 

“Merlin?” Arthur said, pulling a hand free of Merlin’s grasp and raising it to the side of his head. “What happened? Why are you here?” Merlin frowned. He’d forgotten that he’d been meaning to leave, that Gaius would have told Arthur that Merlin was gone.

 

“I was in the forest,” he said, deciding that the truth was the best thing that he could give Arthur right now. “I heard you yelling and I came to help.”

 

“Merlin, you couldn’t help a knight find his way out of his armour, let alone – who on earth are you?” Arthur stared over Merlin’s shoulder and Merlin winced, turning to look. Will was standing behind them, peering down at Arthur with a curious expression on his face.

 

“I told you to stay out of sight,” Merlin whispered fiercely, then turned quickly back to Arthur. “He’s nobody, sire.” Will made an indignant noise. “All _right,_ he’s Will. A friend.”

 

Arthur stared at him for a long moment, face unreadable. “From Ealdor?” he asked at last. Merlin nodded. “Merlin, what in the name of the gods is he wearing?”

 

“Oi, watch it, mate,” Will said. “We can’t all afford poncy crowns like yours.” Arthur blinked at him, trying to work out whether he’d been insulted. Merlin got to his feet, grabbed Will’s arm and pulled him over to the edge of the clearing, away from Arthur.

 

“Will, listen to me,” he said, releasing his grip on Will’s arm. “You have to be careful what you say. Arthur doesn’t know about his future, or about my magic, and he doesn’t know where you’re - where we’re from. And Uther Pendragon is still around, so _please_ keep your mouth shut when we get back to Camelot,” he finished. Will stopped rubbing his arm and frowned at him. 

 

“Isn’t Uther the one we always used to get the Mason’s bulldog to play when we were acting out your book?”

 

Merlin nodded and was gratified to see the man looking a little unnerved. Merlin glanced back over his shoulder to see that Arthur was sitting up, staring over at them with an annoyed expression on his face.

 

“Come on,” he said to Will, and they walked back towards the prince together.

 

***

 

“I still don’t understand, Merlin,” Arthur said sharply as they walked beneath the gates of the castle, Arthur walking half-supported by Merlin and Will, even though he’d insisted that he was fine.

 

Merlin sighed. “Will wanted me to go back to Ealdor,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead as he spoke. “I told Gaius I would be gone for a few days and I went to meet him, and then this morning I heard you yelling and we found you in the forest with the sorcerer.” He heard Will give a snort from Arthur’s other side.

 

“Gaius said that you weren’t coming back,” Arthur said, his voice quiet. Merlin looked at him then, in time to see the edge of an expression drift off the man’s face, one that Merlin didn’t recognise. He was about to ask what was wrong, but at that moment they walked out into the courtyard and Merlin forgot everything else but the sight of the castle, standing battered and dark above them.

 

They looked up at it, mouths open. There were chunks of stonework missing from around the top of the battlements, and most of the east wall looked as though a mountain of soot had been upended over it. The courtyard ahead of them was similarly dark. Merlin could see the knights, sweaty and red-caped, and he spotted Gwaine and Leon and Percival and Lancelot, and he felt a deep, pulsing wave of relief sweep through his chest to see that they were alright.

 

He saw Uther, too, standing beside one of the fallen stones and talking to a group of knights, his face grim, and Merlin realised that it was one of those days when Uther was in control of himself and of the people around him. The king broke off when he saw Arthur and Merlin had seen enough of relief to be able to recognise it, fleeting though it was, as it passed across the man's face.

 

Arthur seemed to tense up beside Merlin when he saw his father. He shot Merlin an odd, almost panicked look, but Merlin didn't question him about it, because Uther had already dismissed the knights and was striding towards them.

 

“What happened, Arthur?” he said as soon as he reached them, his hands clenching into tights fists within his leather gloves as he saw that Arthur was leaning heavily on Merlin.

 

Arthur related the story, as he knew it, to his father, his voice low and rough with the strain of it. Will had only been able to get Arthur alive again, and Merlin's magic seemed only to have reversed whatever it was that the sorcerer did. It hadn't eliminated the exhaustion that Arthur felt from battling half the night and then chasing a man through the forest.

 

He answered Uther's questions with a quiet determination, however, and Merlin was torn between loving Arthur for being so unfailingly strong and hating Uther for making him feel as though he had to be that way.

“Very well,” Uther said after Arthur had finished recounting the events of the forest. “Well done, Arthur. Make sure that he sees Gaius,” he added to Merlin. Merlin bowed his head in agreement.

 

There was a noise from the far side of the courtyard as another stone from high up on the castle wall fell down into the square and Uther's attention was drawn away from them once more.

 

“He's lovely,” Will commented as Uther walked away. “Really wonderful. What a top fellow.” Merlin glared at him, but Arthur was still looking towards his father and he didn't seem to have heard.

 

“Alright,” Will said. “I'll shut up. Are we going to leave soon?” Arthur looked up at that, his eyes fixed on Merlin's face as he listened for Merlin's answer.

 

“We need to find Gaius,” Merlin said, and helped Arthur over to the stairs.

 

***

 

They ran into Gaius on the first floor of the castle, where he was binding the leg of an old peasant lady Merlin recognised from the markets. She'd sold him a length of fabric once, when Arthur had wanted the knees of his favourite training breeches resewn.

 

“Gaius,” Merlin said, and Gaius looked around.

 

“I thought you had left,” he said with surprise, and then he raised an eyebrow as he took in Will, who was  standing beside Merlin and staring down at Gaius' medicines with interest. He was still dressed in jeans, though he wasn't attracting as much attention as Merlin had when he'd first arrived because all of the people they passed were preoccupied with clearing up the mess that the enchanted army had left behind.

 

“I came back,” Merlin said. “Arthur's been injured.” Gaius looked at the prince and nodded. “Take him up to his chambers,” he said. “I will come up immediately.”

 

“No,” Arthur said firmly. “Finish with the people here first, they’re worse off than I am.”

 

“Arthur-“ Merlin started, but Arthur simply shook his head, and Merlin knew that he wouldn’t be dissuaded. 

 

Merlin turned to Will. “Stay with Gaius,” he said. “You can explain what's happened to him, he knows about where we’re – I mean, he knows about everything. But don't interfere.” He looked pointedly down at the medicines, and Will sighed.

 

“Where's the fun in that?” he said, but Merlin knew that he'd do as Merlin asked.

 

***

 

Arthur was quiet as Merlin helped him into his chambers. It was dark in the room, and after he'd led the man over to the bed he walked over to the windows to let in the last of the afternoon sunlight.

 

When he turned back to Arthur, he found that the man was still standing beside the bed, staring at Merlin with an unreadable expression on his face. Merlin knew what it was about – he'd left without saying anything, he'd gone into the forest with no intention of returning, and even if Arthur had believed his story about going to meet Will it still didn't make sense why he wouldn't have told Arthur, and Merlin knew that Arthur would have noticed that.

 

He stepped towards the prince, meaning to explain, but the events were still all mixed up in his head and he was so, so tired. It felt as though half of his energy had flowed out of his body with his magic in the forest, and all he wanted to do was sleep – whether that be here or back in Ealdor, Merlin barely cared.

 

Arthur was still staring at him, as though he was waiting for Merlin to speak, but Merlin couldn't think of the words to describe all that had happened those past few hours, so he let his mouth close and instead simply looked back at the prince, waiting for him to ask why Merlin had left.

 

“You're a sorcerer,” Arthur said.

 

Merlin blinked. That hadn't – Arthur couldn't have said that, he couldn't have known.  Merlin must have misheard.

 

“I'm what?” he asked, even though he could see the truth in Arthur’s face. Arthur knew _._

 

“You practice magic,” Arthur continued. “You are my manservant, but you are also a sorcerer, and you never thought to tell me?” His face was oddly blank now, as though he'd begun to pull his defences back up around himself. Merlin felt a wave of panic flooding tight through his chest. He'd never wanted Arthur to find out about this, not really. He'd imagined it, yes, but the truth – that he had been keeping himself from Arthur, that he'd been _lying_ to Arthur – would never have gone as smoothly as all of those scenes Merlin had pictured.

 

He could still deny it. He didn't know how Arthur had discovered his magic, but he could try and persuade him that he was wrong, that he'd seen something different to what he thought, that he'd been unconscious and dreamed the whole thing. There were a hundred different ways that he could do it, and he had a whole world of lies stretched across his tongue. But in that moment, with Arthur's eyes on him, he let them all fall away. He didn't want to use them. Not now, when he'd finally found a way home and he'd saved Arthur and everything was looking like it was going to be almost alright again. Now was not a time for building up the stories he'd been living with all throughout his time at Camelot. It was time that he tore them down, and he'd just have to try and sort out the pieces left over once he did.

 

“Five people in the world know about my magic,” he said simply. “I told one of them, the others found out about it by accident.” Arthur stared at him, listening intently, and Merlin felt the words falling fast from his mouth, because they'd been locked inside his chest for years and he'd never had the chance to let them out until now.

 

“I didn't tell you at first because it's banned,” he continued, his gaze fixed on Arthur's face.  “You are the son of Uther Pendragon, Arthur, and I didn't know that you wouldn't drag me before your father and have me executed.” Merlin could see Arthur thinking back to their first days as servant and master and the look that passed over the man's face told him that he was right – that obeying Uther was all that Arthur had known. He would have turned Merlin over to the king without a second thought.

 

Merlin took a breath, trying to dull the edge of panic that had surfaced within his chest at that. “And then I didn't tell you because I didn't know how, Arthur,” he said. “I have been keeping it from you, but I haven't been using it against you.” He paused, wanting to show Arthur all of the times he'd saved the prince, all of the times he'd used magic and Camelot hadn't fallen, the city hadn't burned. He wanted to show Arthur that it could be used for good.

 

“Today, in the forest,” Arthur said. “Did you kill the sorcerer?” Merlin nodded. “And William? Is he a sorcerer too?”

 

Merlin almost laughed at that, because Will was the least magical person he'd ever met. “No,” he said. “Will is just Will.”

 

Arthur turned away from Merlin, walking across the stone floor towards the wall. Merlin watched as he reached it and turned back again, his eyebrows pulled together and his jaw set.

 

“Did the sorcerer hit me?” he asked after a moment, his voice quiet, and Merlin bit his lip, knowing that the answer was important. Arthur turned his eyes back up to Merlin's when Merlin didn't respond. “Did he hit me?” he repeated.

 

“Yes,” Merlin said. He knew what that response would mean to Arthur. It would mean that Arthur hadn't won this time, not in the way that counted, and that he would now question every other moment he thought he'd protected his kingdom, every other moment when Merlin was there, grinning at him, when Arthur regained consciousness after a battle.

 

“And you've done that before and kept it from me?” he asked. Merlin nodded, bunching his fingers into the hem of his tunic as he watched Arthur. The man was standing beside the bedpost again, almost slumping against it, and Merlin would have suggested that Arthur go to bed and talk about this in the morning if they'd been having any other conversation but this one.

 

“Is that why you ran?” Arthur asked, stepping closer to Merlin. Merlin blinked, feeling a jolt through his chest at how close Arthur had come to the truth.

 

“You're going to be a great king, Arthur,” he said quietly. “The sort of king that people remember for hundreds of years, and tell stories about. One day in the future people will be able to study your reign and watch television shows about you and dream of the time when King Arthur ruled over the land.” He smiled. “But I'm not supposed to be a part of that, Arthur. That destiny is yours, not mine. _This world_ is yours, not mine.”

 

“Merlin, if I'd been following my destiny I'd probably be married to Princess Elena,” Arthur replied. “And if you had been following yours, I'd still be in that forest right now,” he grimaced, as though admitting that Merlin had actually saved him was something he hadn't wanted to do.

 

Merlin considered that. Arthur didn't know the whole story, but he had a point – the prince had come closer to death that day then he'd ever been before. Merlin was certain that without him there, shredding a hole through time for Will to step through, Arthur would have died in that forest, Camelot would have fallen and the legend would have faded out of existence before it had even begun.

 

“You would never have married Princess Elena,” he replied. “That wasn't ever going to be your destiny.” But perhaps he was right – that in pushing off the path he was supposed to be travelling, he'd found a new one. The legend might still come to pass, Merlin knew, but it was just as likely that he'd set things on a new course, one in which Merlin had a role to play.

 

Arthur was still looking over at him, his face falling into shadow as the sun curved lower in the sky.

 

“Did you study magic?” He asked suddenly, and Merlin realised that he'd forgotten for a second how this conversation had started, and that Arthur could still have him dragged before the king.

 

“I was born with it,” he said. Arthur nodded slowly. Merlin wondered if he understood what it was to be born with something you couldn't control, no matter how you might want to – something that was both a gift and a curse, and something that slid into your life like water and filled up all of the gaps until it was a part of everything that you did. He thought of how Arthur trained constantly, of how he was always with Uther, or with his knights, or with his people, and how he was so defined by his title that the people Merlin saw him talking to didn't see him, not really. They saw the crown he wore. He thought that Arthur might understand something of what it was like to have magic, if nothing else.

 

They were silent then, each staring at the other across the stone floor of Arthur's chambers. Merlin knew what he must look like – his face streaked with dirt, his clothes grass-stained, his hair curling dark around his ears and longer than he usually wore it, because he'd been avoiding getting it cut. Gaius was terrible with the scissors.

 

He looked over at Arthur, standing there with his red tunic battered and deepened to an earthy brown at the elbows. He had pale green smears across his knees and his boots were caked in crusted mud. There was little to distinguish between them – Arthur, in that moment, was just as likely to be a servant as he was a prince.

 

“How did you know?” he asked, and Arthur looked up at him.

 

“Your eyes in the forest,” he said. “They were glowing, Merlin, like the sun.”

 

Merlin frowned. Arthur must have seen him in those seconds before he drifted out of consciousness. Merlin's eyes, overflowing with gold as he sent his magic out into the world, were probably the last things Arthur saw.

 

“Why didn't you say anything before?” he asked, because Arthur had kept it quiet all the way from the forest to Camelot, and they'd spoken to Uther without Arthur mentioning anything of it. They'd talked to the king, and Arthur hadn't revealed Merlin's secret, even though it must have been burning harsh and bright through Arthur's mind when he saw his father.

 

“You saved my life,” Arthur said, shifting uncomfortably against the bedpost. “You deserved the chance to explain.”

 

Merlin stared at him, and in that moment he realised that Arthur wasn't the prince anymore – he was, but not in the way that Merlin saw him. Merlin could see everything of his childhood, storybook king in Arthur at that moment – his bravery, his fairness, his belief that even in the worst of people there could be some chance of redemption.

 

There was a tiny tugging in the centre of his heart as Merlin realised that and he felt a wash of pride surge through his chest, because Arthur had managed to find his way through all of Uther's teachings and his solid, unshakeable view of the world – the view that he'd tried to pass on to Arthur – and the prince had still emerged as the man Merlin had dreamt of; the man he hadn't thought was real.

 

He stepped closer to Arthur, his boots tapping loud against the stone floor, until he was close enough to see the beginnings of stubble lined over Arthur's jaw and the charcoal-coloured shadows streaked beneath his eyes.

 

“Arthur,” he said, and then knelt at the man's feet.

 

Arthur didn't move as Merlin sank down. Merlin knew that this wasn't to beg for his life, a slow drop of unwilling submission before some greater power. Merlin did not fear Arthur. He would not fear the prince even if Arthur chose to turn away from him in that moment. Arthur was almost all of Merlin's life; he'd seeped into every corner of Merlin's being, until Merlin could no more fear him than he could himself.

 

No, Merlin knew that that moment, when his knees touched hard against the stone floor, was not submission. It was an apology, because Merlin had not trusted Arthur enough to let him make this decision, and there was love in it, too, because Arthur had found his way to this moment on his own. It was the respect that Merlin could now show Arthur, fully and without reserve, because no matter his decision now, he'd stepped out from behind his father and found a way of passing through the world – and of ruling over it – that was his and his alone.

 

They both remained unmoving for a moment, Merlin's dark head bowed before his golden prince, and Merlin wondered what they must look like – two men, dusty and stretched out at the seams, frozen within the castle like they’d forgotten how to move.

 

Arthur pushed himself upright from the bedpost, his face solemn, and Merlin felt his heart thud hard within his chest. But the prince merely reached out a hand and placed it gently on the top of Merlin's head, until Merlin could feel Arthur's fingers curled through his hair.

 

“Don't run from me again,” he said quietly. The words pulsed through Merlin, sending a wave of something that was a little like relief swarming through his chest. Arthur's words were somewhere between a request and an order, and they told Merlin that he shouldn't try to flee from the rule of Camelot, but also that he wouldn't have to. Arthur was his prince, and Arthur would keep him safe.

 

Merlin nodded, and Arthur bent down and pulled him upright, wrapping his arms around Merlin and holding on tight. It was the first time Arthur had done so and Merlin felt the prince warm around him, pressed between him and the world. He felt as though this was alright – that they'd passed through the hardest of moments and they'd emerged whole – not unscathed, but okay. There was nothing irreparable about them.

 

Merlin pushed his face into Arthur's shoulder, the scent of metal from Arthur's armour and earth from the forest and, laced through it all, the deep, familiar scent of _Arthur_ strong around him, and he felt himself finally relax. He didn't need to hide himself from Arthur any longer, and up until that moment the knowledge that he was – that he was keeping some part of himself submerged deep below the surface where Arthur couldn't reach it – had been tearing him apart.

 

But now, they'd opened up each of those tiny corners of themselves and cast them out into the light, and Merlin knew that they were finally equal.

 

There was a tap at the door and Merlin sprang back out of Arthur's arms as Gaius appeared around the edge of the wood, closely followed by Will.

 

“You were injured, sire?” he asked, and Arthur blinked, as though he'd forgotten the world outside of the room still existed.

 

“He was hit by a spell,” Merlin explained. “Will revived him, though.” Arthur looked between Merlin and Will in surprise.

 

“Thank you,” he said, and Will gave a surly shrug.

 

“That's what I'm here for,” he said.

 

Gaius was by Arthur's side now, running his hands over the prince's arms, chest and head in a routine he must have perfected hundreds of times as Arthur grew, after the prince had fallen off horses or been attacked by bandits or been hurt in any of the hundred different ways he'd managed to since Merlin had arrived in Camelot. Being Arthur's physician, just like being his manservant, was a full-time job.

 

“Everything appears to be in order,” Gaius said after a few moments. Merlin frowned at Will, who had an expression on his face as though he was about to ask Gaius if he could check Arthur over as well.

 

“You were lucky though, sire,” Gaius added. “This young man tells me that it could have been much worse.” He paused, seeming to realise that he didn’t actually know what story Merlin had told the prince about his recovery.

 

“It’s okay, Gaius,” Merlin said. “Arthur knows.”

 

There was a moment of silence in which everyone stared at Merlin (well, everyone except Will, who was still scowling at Arthur), and then Gaius blinked and said ‘knows _what_ , Merlin?’ in a disapproving sort of a voice at the same time as Arthur turned to Merlin and said ‘wait, so _Gaius_ knew before I did?’

 

Merlin looked helplessly between the two of them.

 

 “It isn’t my fault!” he said, and Arthur gave a disbelieving snort.

 

“It _isn’t,_ ” Merlin repeated. “Gaius found out when I saved his life, Arthur, and Gaius, I was only using magic in front of Arthur to save _his_ life.”

 

“Modest, isn’t he?” Will said cheerfully, and then shut his mouth with a snap when both Gaius and Arthur turned to stare at him.

 

“If you know the spell now, Merlin, I suggest that you take this man home as soon as possible,” Gaius said. Will raised an eyebrow at him.

 

“A spell?” Arthur asked, puzzled. “Why would you need a spell to get to Ealdor?”

 

Merlin bit his lip. He’d forgotten that they hadn’t discussed this in the talk that they had earlier, and that Arthur still didn’t really know where it was that Merlin was from. He cleared his throat, looking over at Gaius, hoping that the old man could tell him what it was that he should say. 

“It’s complicated, sire,” Gaius said. “Merlin is –“

 

“From the future,” Will finished. “We both are. Like Marty McFly, only better.” Merlin made a strangled sort of a noise and Will blinked at him.

 

“You’re Doc,” he added.

 

Merlin took two long strides across the room, seized him by the arm and dragged him over to the door. “Will,” he hissed. “This is serious.”

 

“I know,” Will said with a grin, but then sobered at the look on Merlin’s face. “He needed to know, Merlin,” he continued. “And your old man there wouldn’t have told him.”

 

Merlin looked back over his shoulder to where Arthur was gaping at them, looking half-disbelieving and half-surprised.

 

“I know, but – just wait outside the door, will you?” he said.

 

Will frowned. “Yes, _my lord_ ,” he said, and slumped against the wall opposite Arthur’s chambers.

 

Merlin shut the door firmly and turned back to see that Gaius had a hand on Arthur’s arm, and was talking to him in the low, reassuring tone he used when he was explaining magic to the king.

 

“It’s a simple magical abnormality,” he said. “They happen sometimes. Merlin will be back in his own time soon enough.”

 

Merlin stiffened at that, watching for Arthur’s reaction, but the prince simply flicked his gaze over to Merlin’s face for the briefest of moments before looking back at Gaius, his face impassive.

 

“We should wait until tomorrow though,” Merlin interrupted. “I think I need sleep before I can try the spell.” It was true enough, even if that wasn’t the real reason why he wanted to wait. He felt bone-tired and stretched out with the stress of the day, and he was sure that the spell would be beyond him if he attempted it now.

 

“Very well,” Gaius said. “The Will boy had better sleep in your room, Merlin, and perhaps you could use the pallet in here.” He turned to Arthur for approval. Arthur gave a sharp nod before walking around the table and sitting down on the windowsill in a motion that clearly said that they were dismissed.

 

 _At least he didn’t have me executed,_ Merlin thought. The worst of the day was over now, he was sure, and he had several hours to think over what Arthur had said before he would have to return to the man’s chambers that night.

 

Only when they reached the passageway outside Arthur’s chambers, Will was nowhere to be seen.

 

***

 

Merlin found him an hour later, sitting at one of the big, rough-hewn tables in the tavern. There was a man sitting opposite him with his back to Merlin, and Merlin walked closer, wondering which of the town’s not-exactly-friendly men Will could have managed to get himself mixed up with in such a short space of time.

 

“Merlin!” Will said, spotting him and waving a flagon in his direction. “I’ve found your knight friends!”

 

The man opposite Will swung around on his chair, and –

 

“ _Gwaine?_ ” Merlin asked incredulously.

 

“Hello there, Merlin,” Gwaine said with a wave. “Come sit down. I’ve just been hearing all manner of stories about you from your lovely friend here.” He waved an arm at Will, narrowly missing hitting him in the face, and Merlin sighed.

 

“How the hell did you two meet?” he asked, sliding onto the bench beside Will.

 

“Met him in the passage,” Will said. “After you dumped me out.”

 

“You told Arthur that I was _Doc_ from Back to the Future!”

 

Will blinked at him. “It was a compliment,” he said, frowning.

 

“How is that –“ Merlin shook his head. “Never mind. Will you come back up to the castle now?”

 

“Not likely,” Gwaine said, grinning at him. “He’s got his sights set on the barmaid.”

 

Merlin turned his eyes towards the bar, where a young, blonde-haired lady was filling a flagon for a group of men from the lower town. She looked just Will’s type –gorgeous and completely out of his league.

 

“Will,” he started, but Gwaine reached over and patted him comfortingly on the back.

 

“It’s alright, Merlin, I’ll look after him.”

 

Merlin highly doubted that, but he could see a –thankfully sober – Leon nodding at him from the table next to theirs, and so he figured that it was probably safe to leave them here for a while.

 

“Look after him?” he asked as he passed Leon’s table. Leon smiled up at him.

 

“I always do, Merlin,” he said, looking over at Gwaine with his smile still fixed in place, and Merlin nodded, understanding.

 

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

 

The air was cooler when Merlin left the tavern, and the sun was curving low towards the horizon. He didn’t turn towards the castle straight away, though, instead walking down towards the edge of the town. He could hear the chatter of voices floating out from several of the houses that he wandered past, and he kicked at the beaten-down earth beneath his feet, trying not to think about the next day.

Instead, he tried to focus on the town around him, on the way it was slowly settling down for the night as he passed. All of the shop doors were shut up tight, the market stalls were folded away and Merlin could hear the soft animal noises that meant that the pigs and the chickens were safely tethered beneath their shelters. Camelot was peaceful at this time of night, with the roads almost empty and only a few guards standing on duty near the castle walls.

 

He would miss this, he realised. Not just Arthur and Gwen and the knights, not just the way he was able to do magic almost freely, but _this_ – the town itself, with its earth-coloured houses and its animals and the way you were fenced in by the walls, safe within its borders from anything outside.

 

Merlin turned back as he reached the edge of the town, where the houses were further apart and smaller. He could see the castle from where he stood, looming over the rest of the buildings, its windows already glowing gold with candlelight. He loved that castle, the way it was always changing, how you could never quite tell what colour its stones were. It was his home now, and some small part of him would still see it as such, even after he’d gone back to Ealdor and his rented flat.

 

It made his breath hitch a little inside his chest to think that he’d be returning to a Camelot that didn’t have the castle there. He pushed that thought away, wrapping his arms tightly around himself and heading back along the darkening road towards home.

 

***

 

When he arrived back at the castle, he went to check on Will and found him sitting in the passage near Gaius’ chambers, his head tilted back against the stone wall behind him and his eyes fixed on the sky outside the window. Merlin sunk down next to him, nudging an elbow against the man’s side.

 

“Miss me?” he asked after a moment, and Will flashed him a grin.

 

“Nope,” he said. Merlin scowled. “Oh come on, Merlin, you’ve only been gone a month or so. I was a little annoyed you weren’t replying to my texts, but –“ he looked around at the stone corridor, “-there probably isn’t all that much reception here, so I’ll forgive you this time.”

 

Merlin blinked at him. “A month?” he repeated, his voice rough with surprise. “Will, I’ve been here for _years._ ”

 

Will stared at him. “You can’t have,” he said. “You only left Ealdor a month ago.”

 

Merlin bit his lip, thinking. “It must have been my magic,” he said slowly. “I think it recognises your time.” Merlin knew the feel of that year, so close to the spot at which he left it, better than any other. Perhaps that was the only other time he’d ever be able to reach.

 

“Well, you don’t look any older,” Will said, narrowing his eyes at him. “Except for all that grey hair, Merlin. You really should do something about that.” Merlin laughed. He’d tried being old, and Will was closer to the truth than he knew. 

 

“How’s Hunith?” he asked suddenly. Will smiled.

 

“Still cooking me dinner whenever I come around to see if she’s heard from you,” he said. “She isn’t too worried, though – seems to think you’re off finding yourself, or finding your true path, or finding your husband, and that’s why you haven’t been in touch.” Will eyed him. “She’s not too far wrong with that, either.”

 

“I haven’t found anything of the sort,” Merlin said, but he smiled anyway, leaning back against the wall and watching the sun arc slowly down towards the horizon through the window opposite them.

 

“How did you do it?” he added after a moment. “With Arthur, in the forest. How did you fix him?” he knew that Will wasn’t a proper doctor yet, that he had years of training to go, and that he shouldn’t have been able to save Arthur like he did.

 

Will blinked. “He was fixed, Merlin,” he said. “I don’t know what your magic did to him, but as soon as I started CPR he came back.” His voice was quiet, and Merlin wondered what it must have been like for Will, to try to save Arthur when he was in a strange forest with Merlin unconscious beside him and the body of a magician cooling on the other side of the clearing. Will had been brave, he realised, more so than Merlin could ever have been.

 

“Thank you, Will,” he said softly, and Will wrapped an arm around Merlin’s shoulder, his skin warm against Merlin’s back. They stayed like that until the passageway filled with shadow, and the dinner bell for the servants rang loud in some lower part of the castle.

 

“See you tomorrow, yeah?” Merlin said, stretching out his stiff limbs and standing upright. Will nodded, clambering to his feet and heading through the narrow doorway into Gaius’ chambers with an apprehensive expression on his face.  Merlin had seen Will giving Gaius odd looks and he knew that the idea of spending the night in the room next to his was something Will wasn’t too pleased with.

 

“His eyebrows, Merlin,” he’d complained earlier. “They’re _alive._ ”

 

But Merlin had simply fixed him with a steady gaze and told him that it was that or Arthur’s bed. Will had paused for a surprisingly long moment before deciding that yes, he could survive one night near Gaius.

 

***

 

Arthur was in his usual seat on the windowsill when Merlin walked in carrying a plate of food from the kitchens.

 

“How’s Will?” he asked, turning his eyes to Merlin with an odd expression on his face.

 

“He’s fine,” Merlin said. “He’s scared of Gaius, though.” He put the plate down on the table and then paused, uncertain whether Arthur wanted him to stay.

 

“So you’re leaving,” Arthur said casually, turning his head to look back out the window.  Merlin stepped closer and looked over Arthur’s shoulder, out over the dark town. He could recognise the buildings now – the small, rounded roof of Gwen’s house, the pointed, grey-shingled roof of the butcher’s. They felt familiar to him now.

 

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. Arthur turned suddenly away from the window and pulled Merlin to him, his lips warm against Merlin’s own.

 

Merlin kissed him back hard, tongue tangling with Arthur’s, until he could taste the prince on his lips. He didn’t want to let Arthur go; he wanted to hold him so tightly and for so long that they both forgot what it was to live with themselves alone. He wanted to stand so close beside him that other people forgot that there had been a time when Arthur hadn’t had Merlin there.

 

Arthur curled his arms tightly around Merlin’s waist and pulled him over to the bed with an intensity that Merlin recognised, because it matched the way that Merlin was feeling. Arthur handled Merlin roughly, biting at his neck and then soothing over the spot with his tongue. He was pushing hard against Merlin, as though he was trying to pin him to this time, as though he was trying to drown out the world, so that all that mattered was Arthur, so that Merlin realised that he could learn to live without everything else but his prince.

 

And Merlin let him. He let Arthur push him back onto the bed and run his lips over Merlin’s chest, flicking a tongue over Merlin’s nipple until Merlin arched into it, gasping. He let Arthur curve himself over Merlin, like he wanted to sink beneath Merlin’s skin, fingers slicked down and working Merlin open in fast strokes, ones that left Merlin breathless and moaning against Arthur’s mouth.

Arthur slid into Merlin then, seating himself hilt-deep with his blonde hair damp with sweat and his burning gaze fixed steady on Merlin’s face. It was only then that he finally stilled, holding himself in place, so that Merlin could feel Arthur pressed wide and deep within him, the sensation almost too much to bear.

 

“Stay, Merlin,” Arthur said softly, and Merlin nodded, babbled _yes_ , he would, of course he would, Arthur, _move_ , and even if it was a promise that Arthur didn’t expect him to keep, drawn out from him while he was tipping on the edge of release, it was still one that Merlin knew they both needed to hear.

 

And Merlin knew that he would remember this, even if all of his other memories faded away. He would remember this, because it was a moment that was not tied to one time or to another, but to Merlin, so that he would always have the memory of Arthur pressed vivid and warm into his mind, no matter which time he chose to stay in.

 

He wanted to remember all of Arthur, though – the way the man looked in the mornings, when his hair was messy and his cheeks were flushed pink with sleep; the way he looked when he was on patrol, when he got that tiny frown of concentration on his face as he watched for any signs of disturbance; the way he was now, curled around Merlin with his lips against Merlin’s neck, even though he’d said that he ‘didn’t cuddle, _Mer_ lin,’ and that Merlin would be thrown out of bed if he ever suggested that was what it was.

 

 _I love you, Arthur Pendragon,_ Merlin wanted to say, but he didn’t quite know how to. He didn’t yet know whether he should.

 

***

 

He made his decision sometime after midnight, when Arthur was stretched out and loose with sleep in the sheets beside him and the night had peaked, drifting quickly on towards the dawn.

 

Merlin thought of the way Ealdor had looked in the forest, grey and foreign. He thought of leaving Camelot, of letting Arthur stumble onwards without Merlin by his side, making whatever destiny he could of the pieces of the legend that remained after Merlin had gone. It was a sharp-edged thought, one that lodged hard in his chest and made his throat ache with how utterly _alone_ they both would be.

 

He didn’t think he could return to a world that didn’t have Arthur in it, or find a job that didn’t involve walking through the passageways of the castle each day. He hadn’t forgotten how to live in Ealdor, but he’d forgotten how to live with it, how to accept that life as the only one that he would get.

 

He didn't know much about this world. It was as complicated as the one in which he was born; there were rules that he still didn't understand and there was still not much of a place for a big-eared, sharp-elbowed man with his veins full to bursting with magic to fit. He didn't know how he could possibly go forward from this moment, when this world was still so foreign to him.

 

But love – love, he knew. He had heard it echoed in every story he’d ever read, and he could see it in the hearts of everyone he met. It was buried deeper than anyone had dared to look in some people, while in others it was covered up by pain and by need and by bitterness, but it was what he knew and what he knew how to find. He could show Arthur love, because it was all he’d ever known. He hadn’t been any good at stopping his mother from crying on those days when the world seemed to have spun on without them, and he’d never been any good at living in a world where everyone was hemmed in by buses and cars and everything was so relentlessly _fast_ , but he could do love like no one else in this land, because he had spent his life waiting for it.

 

And perhaps that would be all he would do. There were people who faded into the fabric of life, even as they were living it. There were people whose most exciting moment had been meeting the cousin of Brad Pitt in the queue at a shopping centre, and there were people whose love didn’t define anything – people whose love wasn’t different to anyone else’s, who didn’t have a million dollar wedding, or die for each other, or change the world. Merlin could do that sort of love. He could do the sort of love that meant holding onto Arthur’s hand when the prince sat by the window overlooking the courtyard, the love that meant poking Arthur in the side when the man got too prattish, and the love that meant holding Arthur tight to him while the prince fell apart, because there were days when he couldn’t be brave. Merlin could do the love that meant being there, every second of every day, so that Arthur would see him and know that in that moment, when he'd been tipping on the edge of two worlds, he'd seen Arthur's face and he’d chosen to stay.

 

And perhaps it wouldn’t be the sort of love he’d always imagined, with a wedding and nights spent tangled up in each other and days where they stayed in bed with the sunlight drifting warm over the sheets. Perhaps he’d have to step aside one day so that Gwen could fit in beside them, but Merlin didn’t think that mattered all that much. He could do that, if Arthur needed it from him. Arthur was the only thing tying him to this world any more.

 

Merlin tucked his arm around Arthur’s waist with the weight of his decision curled warm within his chest, and he drifted into sleep as the night paled into silver in the sky above.

 

***

 

When they awoke the next morning, Arthur, Merlin, Gaius and Will climbed the long, curving stairs towards the battlements of the castle. The sky was streaked with apricot when they emerged onto the roof and the clouds were hanging low and fat above the rising sun. It was as good a time as any to say goodbye to a world, and Merlin knew which one he'd be farewelling.

 

“Go on then,” Will said, poking a finger into Merlin's shoulder. “Do your stuff.” He waggled his fingers wildly in the air and Merlin frowned at him.

“That isn't how I do it,” he said. Will raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Well, not anymore. I stopped that when I was ten, Will, you know that.” Will had teased him about it often enough.

 

He looked around to where Arthur was waiting, watching him steadily. It was strange to think that he could do magic where Arthur could see, that he could send his power sliding out of his fingers while Arthur's eyes were upon him. Will cleared his throat and Merlin blinked, trying to focus. He stepped forward and closed his eyes, sending a tendril of thought pushing down into the deeper parts of his mind, seeking out his magic. He tapped against it and the shell of it broke, letting it pulse fast and free through his body, as though it knew what he needed it for. The spell came easily to mind – not words, as such, but a way of twisting his power until it slid sharp against time and carved it open.

 

He heard Arthur make a low sound beside him, something which might have been a gasp slipping from his lips, and then Merlin could feel two worlds stretching out beneath the edges of his magic rather than one. All he had to do was hold it now, and he did so with one corner of his mind as he turned to Will.

 

“You can go through,” he said. Will stepped up to the gap and peered cautiously through.

“Main Street?” he said with a grimace. “You've got the whole of Ealdor to choose from and that's where you're dropping me off?”

 

Merlin rolled his eyes. “At least it's the right century,” he said, nodding at the cars parked on the side of the road. Arthur moved closer, looking curious.

 

“You'd better go,” Merlin added, eyeing Arthur warily. He couldn't exactly order the prince to stay back, and he didn't want Arthur seeing the whole of a time he was never meant to experience.

 

Will looked at him. “You're not going to come, then?” he asked. It wasn't a question, not really, because Will had probably known that Merlin wasn't coming back, as soon as he’d seen him kneeling beside the prince. But he asked anyway, because Merlin had never chosen to stay this far away from Will before. Not willingly.

 

Merlin knew that this was the point where their paths diverged, where they shifted from being together into something a little more stretched out, because Will was returning to somewhere that Merlin couldn't bring himself to go. He shook his head, his chest suddenly filled with a dull, aching sadness, because he had always expected an ending and a farewell, but he'd never thought that it would be this one.

 

Will stepped forward and threw his arms roughly around Merlin's shoulders, pulling him close for a few warm moments before letting him go.

 

“You look after him,” he growled at Arthur, and for once Arthur didn't snap back at him, but instead simply nodded.

 

“You'll come visit, though,” he said, and Merlin said yes, of course, even though he wasn't sure that he was brave enough to try. He didn't know that he could feel his way back through the centuries to this spot from the other side of the gap. He knew what his own time felt like, but he wasn't sure that he could recognise this one, and he didn't want to pass through the gap without Arthur and then spend the rest of his life searching for the way back.

 

“Or you could come here,” he added, and Will made a face in Arthur's direction, as if to say _not likely._ “And Will?” he said, staring at the man. “Tell my mum where I am, and that – that I love her, okay?” Will nodded, his gaze warm on Merlin’s face.

 

They stood there looking at each other and Merlin couldn't think of any other reason not to let Will go now, except that he didn't want the man to pass through that gap and he didn't want to have to seal it shut behind him.

 

But then Will ran a hand roughly over his face and stepped forward towards the gap, turning at the last second to smile back at Merlin.

 

“See you around,” he said, and then he walked through, the gold light swirling fast around the edges of his body until Merlin couldn't tell where Will ended and where Merlin's magic began.

 

Merlin stood still for a long moment, watching the tiny piece of Will's world shimmering in front of him, and then he took a deep breath and let it crack free of his magic and tumble in on itself until all he could see was the stone of the roof and he couldn't feel the gap anymore. He felt Arthur's hand come down on his shoulder, a solid, comforting pressure that lessened the thudding ache in his chest.

 

Merlin turned away, wiping his eyes, and they walked away from the gap together, following Gaius towards the stairs. They both turned just before they left the roof to look at the end of the sunrise, shifting brilliant and gold over the sky. Merlin reached out a hand and curled his fingers between Arthur's, and they stood and watched the sun touch against the edges of the Pendragon kingdom. It would be Arthur's one day, Merlin knew, and he'd be right here beside Arthur for every step of the way.

 

He knew that in some stories there was a limit, that you had to choose between the world in which you lived and the world in which you belonged, but this was not those stories. This was Merlin’s story, and his story was different. He didn’t know how it would end, yet, and he didn’t know whether he’d be Arthur’s sorcerer or his consort or his servant or his king. He didn’t know what would happen. But, Merlin supposed as he pressed his fingers against Arthur's, no one ever knew how their own story would end.

 

 _  
**Epilogue**   
_

 

He had the idea several years into Arthur’s reign, when Merlin still hadn’t quite gotten accustomed to seeing Arthur as an actual king rather than a prince. The man hadn’t changed all that much – his ego had gotten larger to match his bigger crown, and there were times when he was quiet and Merlin could see that he was thinking of his father, who’d succumbed to illness and passed out of the world five years after Merlin had decided to stay. But for the most part his Arthur was the same Arthur that he’d been manservant to years ago, albeit with a little more facial hair, because he’d somehow managed to get it into his head that a bearded king was a good king.

 

It had been a warm summer afternoon when the thought had first occurred to Merlin, and it had taken him a week of consideration before he’d decided what to do. He waited until Arthur was out with Gwaine and Leon, surveying the lower town, and then walked through the castle towards the library, his robes flapping around his feet.

 

He frowned at them as he walked, pausing to tug them up so that he wouldn’t trip over the hem. They’d been Arthur’s present to Merlin after he’d been appointed as court sorcerer, though Merlin had a feeling that Arthur got more satisfaction out of them than Merlin did.

 

“I can’t wear that, Arthur, it’s a dress,” he’d said when Arthur first showed them to him.

 

“It isn’t a dress, you idiot. They’re the traditional robes of the court sorcerer.”

 

“Arthur, magic has been banned in Camelot for twenty years _._ You invented the title of court sorcerer _last night_. There is no way that they’re traditional.”

 

Arthur had pouted at him then, and Merlin had given up in the end, partly because he was still a bit thrilled by the fact that he was going to be able to do magic as a job, and partly because Arthur had quickly stopped pouting and had instead started mouthing along his neck in a very distracting way.

 

“All right,” he’d said eventually, and Arthur had grinned and immediately produced a matching pointed, dark blue hat that Merlin most definitely _would not_ wear, no matter how pretty Arthur said it made him look.

 

The library stretched cool and dark around him as he walked into it. Geoffrey was where Merlin had expected he'd be, sitting hunched over his desk with a candle guttering low beside him.

 

“Sire,” he said when he saw Merlin, and Merlin almost jumped at the title, because that hadn't sunk in yet, either, even though Geoffrey had married them several years earlier. It had been a tiny, secret sort of a wedding, one where there was no one to watch but the knights and the forest stretched boundless and green around them. Gwen had been there, too, her hand on Lancelot’s arm and a peaceful smile on her face. Gwaine had been pressed far too close to Leon, who was trying to look as though he didn’t notice at all, when Merlin knew that all he really wanted to do was push Gwaine back against the nearest tree and kiss him soundly. Elyan and Percival had been standing at the edge of the clearing, grinning around at everyone, with wide, cheerful faces and nodding up at the sky, where Kilgharrah was circling on his aged wings. It was love that Merlin had seen there, beneath those summery branches  – a happy, unfettered sort of love, one that came of knowing that you were finally everything that you had ever wanted to be, and that you were with the people you had always wanted to be with.

 

Merlin looked down at Geoffrey, his eyes running over the man's pale, lined skin. He'd been down here since before Merlin came to Camelot, guarding the books all that time. He had seen King Uther rise and fall, and he would see King Arthur's reign as well, or at least the years of it that passed while he still walked upon the earth. Merlin knew that this man, who knew more about words than anyone Merlin had met, would find the right ones for this.

 

“There's a story I'd like you to write,” Merlin said, “And it's very important that you write it as I say.”

 

He wouldn’t tell Arthur about the legend, he decided later, because it wasn’t something that Arthur needed to know. Arthur would make each of his decisions as king because he felt them to be the right ones, not because he knew that they were the ones that he had to make.

 

And besides, even Merlin didn’t know which choices were the right ones now. Perhaps there were no right decisions anymore, only those that would bring about change, and those which would not. The story he’d told Geoffrey was just one possibility, one that would be kept hidden away until long after they’d all passed on.

 

And perhaps that was the only version of Arthur’s reign that would survive. If it was, then in years from now, there would be TV shows about King Arthur, and books and films, just the same as those Merlin watched growing up. But – like the ones Merlin knew - they’d tell the story of Arthur and his queen, of Arthur and his people, and of Arthur and his brave, loyal knights, because the story of Arthur and Merlin was one that didn’t need to be told to the world.  That story was theirs alone.

 

Sometimes, Merlin knew, there were stories within stories. Sometimes there are parts of a world that don’t make it into the history books or into the legends. Sometimes those tales aren’t important, but sometimes – just sometimes – they’re the most important parts of all.

 

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